Outagamie County new site for proposed waste-to-energy facility
By: Bret Lemoine
Updated: January 31, 2013
ONEIDA, Wis. (WFRV) After years of failed attempts to build a waste-to-energy plant in Brown County, members of the Oneida Seven Generations Corporation are looking to try their luck on tribal land in Outagamie County.
Project leaders tell Local 5 their looking to build it at the current location of the Oneida Food Distribution Center. They say the facility would differ from Green Bay plans in that they would only turn recyclable plastics into base oil.
Environmentalists and some tribal members have the same concerns they had last time: they wonder about smokestacks, emissions, and impacts to their health.
The Corporation released this statement, which read in part:
OSGC is committed to do a thorough environmental review to determine the environmental impact on the proposed area for the project. OSGC has conducted community presentations and their first public hearing on the proposal. They hope to assure the Oneida citizens and community that all due diligence and tribal processes and procedures have been adhered to and respected. We are all of one mind and that is to make sure we protect our environment.
The project got its first hearing on Monday, January 28, in front of the Oneida Land Commission. There were approximately 35 people in attendance. Of the speakers all but one spoke in support of the project. This hearing was the first step in the process of vetting this proposal through the Oneida Tribal processes and federal approvals required. This project is expected to be less complex than the previous waste to energy project targeting a Green Bay location.
A major difference in this project versus the Green Bay project is that the municipal solid waste (MSW) needed to be sorted and shredded at the Green Bay site prior to going through the conversion to electricity, the high plastic waste for the Oneida site will not need to be pretreated on site.
OSGC expects to continue to hold public hearings for interested community members and hopes to see this project succeed as a way to reduce the dependency on landfills.
