EPA says burn plant needn't report waste

LAYTON — The Environmental Protection Agency has backed off an earlier request to have burn plant workers characterize the waste they incinerate.

EPA attorney Wendy Silver said her agency concluded that the plan was a practical impossibility.

"They were asking us to do the impossible, and they agreed," incinerator attorney Larry Jenkins said.

The plan, dubbed waste characterization, required employees to determine what type of trash was being burned when. The process was designed to discover what garbage produces certain emissions. Specifically, the EPA wanted to find out what trash, when burned, produces poisonous dioxin gas, which has been linked to cancer and birth defects.

Dioxin has been a concern at the incinerator. The plant has failed five of 12 dioxin emissions tests over the past six years.

Despite the problems, officials at Wasatch Energy Systems — the special service district that operates the incinerator for 15 cities in Davis and Morgan Counties — had argued that waste characterization was overly cumbersome for their "mass burn" operation.

At the Layton incinerator, large garbage piles are continuously dumped on a conveyor belt and burned. Wasatch Energy leaders said if employees had to pick through the huge piles and "characterize" the garbage, operations would grind to a near standstill.

Incinerator brass also pointed out that different garbage burns at different rates so specific emissions couldn't be traced to specific trash.