Bill easing permitting for plastics processing plants advances despite opposition

PROVIDENCE – Nearly a year ago, state environmental regulators turned away a proposal to build a medical waste-to-energy plant in West Warwick that would use a high-heat process known as pyrolysis to break down used syringes, gloves and tubing into flammable gas, oil and tar.

Now, state legislators are proposing to exempt similar facilities that would use the same process to transform plastics into fuels and other substances from the very rules under which the controversial MedRecycler project was rejected last July.

As it stands, there’s almost no chance that another high-heat medical waste processing proposal could come forward. Gov. Dan McKee signed into law an effective ban on facilities of the kind

in response to broad opposition to the MedRecycler facility.

But the Environment Council of Rhode Island, the Conservation Law Foundation and other groups that came out against the West Warwick proposal say using pyrolysis to process other types of plastic goods raises many of the same concerns about air pollution, water contamination and the emission of planet-warming greenhouse gases.

They argue that the regulatory path for such “advanced recycling” plants shouldn’t be made easier by exempting them from the Department of Environmental Management’s regulations that govern solid-waste management facilities.

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“So-called advanced recycling is toxic and it’s climate-damaging,” said Kevin Budris, senior attorney with the Conservation Law Foundation. “Rhode Island is trying to act on climate and trying to move forward with environmental justice protection, and this bill would be a huge step backward on both of those fronts.”

The DEM, too, believes the exemption sets a bad precedent.

“Given the environmental impacts that the processes taking place at such facilities could potentially have, DEM believes that the current licensing requirements should remain in effect for these facilities,” DEM director Terrence Gray wrote to the Senate Committee on Judiciary. “These licensing requirements facilitate public participation by ensuring that individuals and entities located near proposed projects have an opportunity to provide input.”

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Nevertheless, the bill introduced by Sen. Frank Lombardo III

was approved by the committee on Tuesday and will go before the full Senate next Tuesday. A companion bill in the House, sponsored by Rep. Stephen Casey, D-Woonsocket,

has been referred to the Committee on Corporations but has yet to come up for a hearing.

The legislation comes as the federal government is working on regulations for pyrolysis and a similar process called gasification. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced in September it was considering rules to regulate the technologies as solid-waste incineration.

Lombardo, a Johnston Democrat, did not respond to a request for comment. At a hearing before the judiciary committee last month, he said 18 states have passed similar legislation and that such plants have been built or are under construction in six states.

“If this facility is built in Rhode Island, it’s going to put more than 100 construction workers to work for almost a year,” he said. “It’s also adding a possible 30 to 70 high-paying jobs, depending on the size of the facility.”

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It’s not just about the economics, Lombardo said. He also put forward an environmental argument in support of processing plastics using pyrolysis, which is technically different from burning because it breaks down materials in the absence of oxygen. Lombardo said more needs to be done to divert plastic bags, Styrofoam cups and the like from the Central Landfill, in Johnston, which is nearing capacity.

“We all realize we’re in a state of planetary emergency with environmental problems piling up around us,” Lombardo said. “Unless we address these various issues prudently and seriously, we are surely headed for an environmental disaster.”

Those in the plastics industry say the bill would appropriately regulate pyrolysis plants as manufacturers, not as solid-waste facilities. The plants would still be subject to DEM oversight through air and water discharge permits, supporters of the bill say.

“They’re receiving plastics that are not garbage,” Craig Cookson, senior director of plastics sustainability at the American Chemistry Council, said at the hearing. “It’s an alternative feedstock to natural gas or oil.”

But removing the facilities from the solid-waste permitting process could decrease DEM oversight of what types of materials they take in and where the finished products could go.

Opponents of the bill argue that pyrolysis facilities increase carbon emissions because they require a lot of energy to bring plastics up to high enough temperatures to turn into gases. They also say that nearly all byproducts from pyrolysis don’t get recycled into other plastics products. Instead, they end up being burned, usually as a fuel source, so they also emit greenhouse gases.

At a time when the state is trying to cut emissions, following passage of the Act on Climate last year, it makes no sense to encourage such facilities, opponents argue.

“If this bill were to pass, a plastics pyrolysis facility would be able to move into Rhode Island without undergoing the same transparent process that MedRecycler had to go through,” Budris said in an interview. “It makes it easier to build these facilities and makes it harder to see what’s being proposed and object to what’s being proposed.”

On Friday, Lombardo’s bill was amended to restrict pyrolysis plants to industrial zones or commercial ports that don’t abut residential or designated environmental justice areas. They would also be located near state facilities, such as those operated by the Rhode Island Resource Recovery Corporation or the Narragansett Bay Commission. The amendment also requires air-quality monitoring.

A spokesman for the DEM said the agency still has concerns with the legislation despite the changes.

Before the vote Tuesday, Sen. Leonidas Raptakis, who sits on the judiciary committee and whose district includes neighborhoods near the former MedRecycler project location, asked if the legislation would give cities and towns any say over pyrolysis plants.

No, said Lombardo, before adding, “I don’t think this facility, any advanced recycling facility, would like to go where they’re not welcomed."

This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: Bill easing permitting for plastics processing plants progresses