Saugus residents still wary of Wheelabrator

SAUGUS – It’s been almost a year since the state Attorney General’s office levied a $7 million fine against Wheelabrator for alleged environmental violations.But while plant managers have stressed they’ve gone “above and beyond” to meet compliance guidelines issued by the AG’s office since then, some neighbors who live in the shadow of Wheelabrator’s smokestack are still wary of the trash-to-energy facility.Valeria Capone has lived on Pevwell Drive for 33 years and said she always thinks about moving because of the soot she finds in her yard.”You just wonder,” said Capone. “You wonder what’s in the air. When I plant, I don’t know if it’s GE or if it comes from (Wheelabrator), you get like a black soot over the dirt. It’s only in that past few years that I’ve gotten soot.”Joan Swanson has lived on Pevwell since 1988 and said she has had several friends move out of the area because of the plant.”I always want to move,” said Swanson, whose front porch has a direct view of the smokestack. “I just haven’t done it yet. I don’t know what I’m still doing here to be honest. I’m always told there are good scrubbers on there and it’s supposed to be safe, but what is in the air we’re breathing?”Wheelabrator made several upgrades to its plant this past winter.Regional Vice President Jairaj Gosine led a tour of the facility last week to show some of these improvements, which include a series of new enclosure walls, an ash de-watering system, an enclosure around the trash conveyor and a wheel wash at the ash landfill.Gosine said the new enclosure walls will help keep more of the plant sealed off and help with sustainability.”We put them up and sloped the inside so any water or rain fall we collect,” said Gosine. “Now there’s no runoff anywhere anymore. Everything is inside.”Once inside the facility, Gosine showed off the new ash de-watering system, which filters the water in the plant’s cooling system and sends it to a new 75,000-gallon storage tank where it is reused.”No water leaves this site,” said Gosine. “We reuse everything.”But while the upgrades at the plant are aimed at improving sustainability, Gosine said they have nothing to do with the investigation by the Attorney General’s office.Last May, Wheelabrator agreed to pay $7.5 million to surrounding communities for alleged environmental violations at its Saugus and North Andover plants. The Attorney General alleged Wheelabrator released ash through holes in the roofs of two of its buildings, failed to properly treat and dispose of its ash, repeatedly dumped waste water into surrounding wetlands and failed to report the release of hazardous material to the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection.As part of the settlement, Wheelabrator admitted no wrongdoing, despite paying the $7 million fine.Wheelabrator has long been a fixture in Saugus dating back to the mid-1970s, when it used to be called RESCO. The plant takes in trash from eight surrounding communities – up to 1,500 tons per day – and burns it.This heats up water in a boiler system to create steam which powers a massive GE turbine, according to Melissa Lohnes, communications director for Wheelabrator.The turbine spins at 3,600 rpm and generates 34 megawatts of electricity per hour, enough to power 35,000 homes.One of the byproducts of the burning process is the ash. The plant produces around 200 tons of ash per day, which is taken to a 160 acre on-site landfill, according to landfill General Manager Donald Musial.It’s here where Wheelabrator installed a new wheel-wash system, where truckers returning to the plant from the landfill scrub any leftover ash off of their tires.Musial said the landfill currently has four to six years left until it’s filled in.”Our wish is to go a little bit higher in different areas and allow us to remain here instead of trucking the ash to other landfills in the state,” said Musial.Musial said he was “frustrated” when he first heard about the investigation.”It was not the company I kne