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A STEAM PLANT BURNING REFUSE DUE IN BROOKLYN

A STEAM PLANT BURNING REFUSE DUE IN BROOKLYN
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December 12, 1981, Section 2, Page 29Buy Reprints
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New York City took a significant step yesterday toward building a plant in the former Brooklyn Navy Yard that would burn as much as 15 percent of the city's daily collection of garbage and convert it into steam.

An Illinois energy and engineering company was chosen over three other companies to construct and operate the Brooklyn plant, which the city estimates will cost $226 million and dispose of 3,000 tons of garbage a day.

It is estimated that the city would realize $40 million from the steam plant's first full year of operation. If the city's plans go according to schedule, the Brooklyn project would be completed in 1986. It would be the first of perhaps 10 such plants in the five boroughs.

Residents Fearful on Safety

But long before work begins at the Navy Yard, the proposed plant is likely to generate considerable opposition in the nearby communities of Williamsburg, Fort Greene and Brooklyn Heights. At public hearings in recent months, local residents have already expressed their fears about the safety of a technology that they believe is not fully tested.

Koch administration officials also acknowledge that while they intend to rely heavily on funds from the Federal and state and governments and from the builder, their financing arrangements are far from firm. And before any work may begin, the Board of Estimate must give its approval, meaning that construction is not likely to start until late 1982 or early 1983.

To the administration, the Brooklyn facility and others like it are important for solving a garbage-disposal problem that they feel is reaching a critical point.

Quite simply, the New York is running out of room to dump the 21,000 tons of solid waste that accumulates each day. Most of the rubbish is dumped at two large landfills. But one of them, the Fountain Avenue landfill on Jamaica Bay in Brooklyn, is scheduled to close in 1985, and the other, in the Fresh Kills section of Staten Island, is expected to have no space available by the end of the century. Company Is Experienced

The city's answer is to convert garbage into energy, a process that goes by the name of resource-recovery these days, but that basically is a souped-up form of old-fashioned incineration.

The company chosen for the job is UOP Inc. of Des Plaines, Ill., which has built two similar plants operating in Chicago and Harrisburg, Pa., and is constructing a third facility in Pinellas County, Fla.

None of those plants is as big as the one proposed for the Brooklyn Navy Yard, which would receive garbage in barges entering Wallabout Channel, along Kent Avenue south of the Williamsburg Bridge, from the East River.

According to its arrangement with UOP Inc., the city would own the facility but the company would run it, receiving a fee and a 20 percent share of the revenues from the selling the steam that is produced to a nearby Consolidated Edison Company station.

That energy would then be fed into a utility steam loop in Manhattan, with one hope being that each year a million barrels of oil could be saved that would otherwise be burned at the Con Edison station in Brooklyn. The Sanitation Department estimates the city's share of steam revenues would be $40 million in the plant's first full year of operation.

A big question is how the plant will be financed. Paul Casowitz, a deputy sanitation commissioner, said the city hopes to pay for construction with a combination of tax-free state bonds, Federal aid, UOP money and perhaps a small amount of city capital funds. However, he acknowledged that plans were far from firm and that ''financing will be difficult and complicated.''

Another hurdle for the city will be preparing an environmental inpact statement in the next few months that would receive state approval.

Community groups in Brooklyn have been skeptical, worrying about pervasive odors and other forms of air pollution. A proposal for a similar plant in the Hunts Point section of the Bronx has caused some local organizations to fear that carcinogens would be spewed onto the nearby central food market.

In response, city and UOP officials insist that the technology, while not widespread in the country, has been proved safe in Europe.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section 2, Page 29 of the National edition with the headline: A STEAM PLANT BURNING REFUSE DUE IN BROOKLYN. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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