Leslie Davis was right: Keeping burner’s stink out of ballpark will cost county
Friday, January 30, 2009 at 3:41 am
- 7 Comments
Hennepin County commissioners learned Thursday that they’ll have to pay $500,000 to stop the stink from the county’s downtown garbage burner from entering the new, county-sales-tax-funded, open-air Minnesota Twins stadium next door.
It’s exactly the kind of thing environmental activist Leslie Davis predicted when he sued for further environmental study of the Twins’ ballpark plans.
The full cost of stadium-related mitigation at the incinerator, including moving the entrances for trucks that dump as much as 1,200 tons of garbage each day, is $2.3 million. The stadium, known as Target Field, will seat 40,000 people — or about 40 seats for every local job eliminated by Target Corp. on Tuesday.
The final Environmental Impact Statement for the Twins ballpark (pdf) downplayed the odor problem from the garbage burner (known both as the Hennepin Energy Recovery Center and the Hennepin Energy Resource Company, in either case taking the acronym HERC):
HERC odors were not detected very frequently in the neighborhood … The County also researched the use of odorants to neutralize or mask odors from the tipping hall but decided that more passive approaches to odor mitigation, such as the installation of high-speed fabric doors and management of the volume of waste in the tipping hall, would be more beneficial.
Ironically, Davis was in court on Wednesday to press a complaint against the county commissioners for having him arrested more than two years ago while attempting to speak before them about the Twins ballpark. From his Earth Protector Web site:
SPECIAL NOTE – January 28, 2009
I was in federal court today against Hennepin County on their Motion to Dismiss my Complaint against them for abusing me and arresting me on August 22, 2006. I had gone there in 2006 to testify on the Twins Ballpark matter and the security people, at the behest of Commissioner Johnson, attacked me and arrested me. I did absolutely nothing wrong and I think the judge will recognize that once he reviews the video of the meeting. I hope that he will deny their Motion and allow me to go forward to the discovery stage. Hennepin County’s pleadings and statements are totally untrue.
Disclosure: In the early 1990s, I testified in court as a witness for the plaintiffs in a lawsuit Davis filed under the Minnesota Environmental Rights Act against the City of Minneapolis and the Federal Reserve Bank to require further environmental study of the Fed’s plans for a new headquarters (now built) on the Minneapolis central riverfront.
7 Comments
Comment posted January 31, 2009 @ 6:27 am
I always knew this stadium bill didn’t pass the smell test
Comment posted February 1, 2009 @ 10:41 am
Imagine how many school updates we could have gotten for the same money.
Or increases in the health care system. Or REAL infrastructure improvements, not just building playgrounds fore the rich.
Pawlenty has to go. Along with Coleman.
Comment posted February 2, 2009 @ 3:03 pm
Pawlenty o Stadiums, that is a major source of the deficit.
Now a packaging of the state budget as a debt instrument
to pay interest on. Real clever if you believed in no income no job mortgages.
Kind of like paying the credit card bill with another credit card.
Pawlenty is committing treason against the state with his Ponzi scheme.
Comment posted February 2, 2009 @ 10:51 pm
Finally somebody is giving Leslie Davis some credit.
The stink is the least of the problem …
What about all the toxic emissions that don’t stink?
This monstrosity burns not only garbage but tires and industrial wastes. It’s allowed to send over 2.9 million pounds per year of health-damaging pollutants up the smokestacks. This includes 2200 pounds of lead and 360 pounds of mercury. (Actual emissions *might* be less.) (This information is from the air permit for the facility.)
Alan Muller
Comment posted May 3, 2009 @ 2:35 pm
WOW…the things you dont hear about!!!!
Alan Muller
Comment posted February 2, 2009 @ 10:51 pm
Finally somebody is giving Leslie Davis some credit.
The stink is the least of the problem …
What about all the toxic emissions that don’t stink?
This monstrosity burns not only garbage but tires and industrial wastes. It’s allowed to send over 2.9 million pounds per year of health-damaging pollutants up the smokestacks. This includes 2200 pounds of lead and 360 pounds of mercury. (Actual emissions *might* be less.) (This information is from the air permit for the facility.)
Alan Muller
R
Comment posted May 3, 2009 @ 9:29 pm
Oh Go somewhere you librals. If I recall, this bill was passed by a majority of DFL’rs in the house and senate. Oh, by the way, the gov. can not pass a bill unless it is passed by both the house and senate. Same as the president. So put that in your pipe and smoke it.
Comment posted May 4, 2009 @ 3:16 pm
Haha – this made me laugh. I live next to the HERC in the North Loop. It cleanly burns 286,000 tons of garbage every year while providing 1/5th of Mpls energy. And it doesn’t stink…How do I know? I LIVE 1 BLOCK AWAY. Instead, people turn this whole issue into a political one, where they can rant against politicians and corporate entities. I’m SURE none of the commenters on this page make livings working for any sort of company…. keep whining children.
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