SAUGUS — After a summer break, the Board of Health returned to the library for its Monday night meeting and received an update from WIN Waste Plant Manager Elliot Casey.
Casey informed the Board that the facility had operated at approximately 96% boiler availability and processed 116,000 tons. They also generated around 16,000 megawatts.
“We had five unscheduled downtime events during the time frame, totaling 152 hours, and one scheduled downtime event that was 41 hours in duration,” Casey said. “Since the last meeting, the facility has shipped just shy of 18,000, so 17,842 tons, of ash to the WIN Waste Shrewsbury facility.”
Casey also noted that on June 24, there was a radioactive load identified by the scale house. The load was sent off-site for segregation and decay, and all protocols were followed during the situation.
“We did make a formal notification to MassDEP on the Fourth of July,” Casey said.
The facility also had issues with the Teamsters strike on-site that required a police detail, and for the past three weeks, as Republic has continued to bring trash. “That’s going to remain in place for the foreseeable future,” he said.
“I did want to make a note, I believe there will be a community update being sent out as well, but we are getting all prepped up for a large outage that’s going to take place starting Sunday afternoon and go until November 16,” Casey said. “So, we’ll be taking the turbine offline. That will be removed for cleaning and repairs… That’s to continue to ensure reliable and good operation, helping us meet all our environmental and safety regulations.”
He said that during this time steam will be vented through the silencer. The steam will be visible but not audible during the time. Everything else involving boiler operations will be routine.
“All of our compliance will still always continue to be monitored. During these maintenance activities we’ll still be accepting municipal solid waste with no disruption of service to our customers,” Casey said.
