Haverhill Mayor James J. Fiorentini during the Open Mike Show.
Covanta Energy is seeking to expand its Ward Hill neck landfill, while the city seeks a new host agreement with the Morristown, N.J.-based company.
Covanta, formerly known as Ogden Martin Systems, operates the 1,650-ton-per-day waste-to-energy plant and landfill on the banks of the Merrimack River. Haverhill Mayor James J. Fiorentini made the revelations last night while appearing on WHAV’s Open Mike Show.
“They are here. They’re not going to disappear. They’re not going to go away so we’re negotiating with them now. They have a long way to go on their license from the state, but their host agreement with us expires next year,” Fiorentini said.
Covanta Haverhill Associates operates the trash-burning power plant on a 147-acre site between Interstate 495 and the Merrimack River. Fiorentini said the company is negotiating with the Rogers’ family to expand the landfill, which is running low on space after 30 years of operation.
Gerald McCall, a former state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) worker, told Fiorentini he believes the hills that compose the landfill are reaching their maximum slopes.
The company’s host agreement with the city covers such items as the cost-per-ton the city pays to have its trash accepted as well as fees paid to the city.
Covanta’s plant generates as much as 49 megawatts of electricity, which is sold to an energy wholesaler. The plant replaced an earlier operation, built by James Ricci’s Refuse Fuels, that failed during the mid-1980s. Ricci’s Ward Hill plant processed trash into pellets that were truck to a retrofitted oil-burning power plant in Lawrence.
I think we need to see some real hard data from testing the waters along the rivers edge and downstream to find out just how much pollution the existing mountains of poisonous trash are leaching already before we give another huge company the right to long term destroy our environment.
I agree. The ash pile has grown immensely over the last couple of years. Are we going to find out decades from now that the river is once again contaminated ? It has taken decades to clean it form how bad it once was.