Being a native of Cleveland, I frequent the beaches of Lake Erie during the summer. I live particularly close to Mentor Headlands Beach, and if you face north, the view makes it seem as though the lake is endless. When one of my friends got her senior pictures taken at the beach during high school, she took me to the other side of the beach to show me exactly where they had been taken. I had never been to this side before, which faces east and was beyond some trees, because it wasn't the kind of beach for tanning or playing volleyball (the sand was mostly covered in what could be called large rocks or small boulders ' ouch). I looked across the horizon, and what I saw startled me ' it was the Perry Nuclear Power Plant.
The scene was overwhelming: the crashing of the waves against the rock, the illuminating sun reflecting off the sand and making certain granules sparkle, and then the power plant's cooling towers staring back at me. It instantly disturbed me and continues to bother me to this day, even while others just shrugged their shoulders and told me to lighten up about it. Perhaps it was my sixth sense of environmental consciousness finally taking hold.
I felt this same disturbed feeling when I found out that Erie Renewable Energy has proposed the world's largest tire incinerator along the shores of Lake Erie in Erie, Pa. Sounds like the kind of attraction you'd bring the family to see on road trip, like the world's largest rubber ink stamp or the world's largest cheese wheel.
KEEP ' Keep Erie's Environment Protected ' is a group of citizens and activists who are staunchly against the tire incineration for numerous reasons, including its proximity to local schools, its proximity to the water supply (which is dangerous to both humans and wildlife) and the effects the emitted toxins would have on the environment and human health. I agree with their trying to stop the creation of this plant because, let's face it ' we don't need a plant that will burn 800 tons of tires a day, according to the Pennsylvania Green Party's Web site. That's 1.6 million pounds of pure tire-y goodness ' imagine stepping on the scale and seeing that every morning.
Some herald tire incineration as a positive thing because it creates Tire-Derived Fuel (TDF) that, according to the Energy Justice Network, some industries currently use as a substitute fuel source for fossil fuels. The problem I see with TDF is that it gives yet another market to pollution ' recyclers can sell their tire chips to incineration plants, making it more profitable to sell them for incineration rather than other practical uses, such as to pave roads or replace mulch on playgrounds. And if there is money in burning tires, is it that hard to see that tire companies might not try to make their tires as durable if they know the shorter they last, the more people have to buy, and ' bonus! ' they can make a profit with tire incineration plants, too?
Not to mention tire incineration plants are known as extreme fire hazards. One plant dedicated to incinerating only tires exists in Connecticut, and one used to exist in California before a fire shut it down. That's it. But aside from the high risk of both the flammability and toxic nature of the plant, which would emit sulfur dioxide, carbon dioxide, mercury (among many other toxins) and about 234,000 pounds of ash every day, according to KEEP, there's more!
So far, about 80 percent of the tires will be delivered by railroad, according to KEEP's Web site, www.stopburningtires.com, and that's a lot of trains burning a lot of energy to bring tires from across the United States to be incinerated. And the remaining percentage will be brought via truck, creating traffic and using up ' you guessed it ' more of our lovely fossil fuels in the meantime. And then there is the question of property values ' would you want to have the honor of living within the vicinity of the world's largest tire incineration plant?
People have been talking about tire incineration as the worst possible use of trashed tires for decades. Committing to this plant for 40 or 50 years would be a terrible idea and a step backward considering now is the time for innovation and embracing thought beyond simply burning the waste we create. We know that burning tires is the least productive way to get rid of them, so why build a plant to do just that, especially when it is dangerous to our health and our planet and right next to a body of water and residential life?
I want people to be able to look out at the horizon and see what I saw the first time I ventured out to the beach: the infinite waves flowing slowly toward the shore and the sun shining brightly through a few wispy clouds in the clear blue sky. The sight of smokestacks and the thought of smoldering tires within a mammoth structure along the horizon does not bring that same contented feeling, but it brings me back to the disappointment I felt when seeing a power plant hinder the scene on my side of the lake. And that's a sight I don't want consuming the entire shoreline.-
17 Archives
Cathy Wilson
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