Post 61 in a series. When Green Turns Brown is an examination of a small town’s digester-energy project, in which Whitewater, Wisconsin would import other cities’ waste, claiming that the result would be both profitable and green.
We saw in last week’s post that actual elements of the importation project that City Manager Clapper claims would ‘experimental’ belie his contention. Far from a project being designed to test waste-importation, this is a project that from the very beginning will be able to accommodate heavy truck traffic. See, Post 60, ‘A Truck Loop Specified for Heavy Truck Traffic.’
This week, one sees the same, simple truth, in contradiction to Mr. Clapper’s claims that this is a provision or experimental project: this project even includes a second, new digester mixer, allowing for a volume of importation beyond any existing needs.
In the video below. the project engineer from the Donohue firm, Nathan Cassity, concedes that a second digester mixer is not now needed to manage existing local capacity:
“The first digester already has a mixing system, the second one doesn’t. Umm, the thought there was that digester really is a backup digester and that item could be delayed until that second digester is more util…utilized, excuse me.”
‘Until That Second Digester is More Utilized’ from John Adams on Vimeo.
It’s worth noting that Whitewater no longer has a need for past digester capacity because her economy no longer has a large, commercial enterprise that would use one. City Manager Clapper and Wastewater Superintendent Reel could only make use of a second digester (with mixer) through significant, persistent, waste importation into Whitewater.
Despite even the vendor-engineer’s admission that a second mixer would be necessary now, there is the claim that the second digester and mixer would have a role only ‘when that second digester ‘is more util…utilized, excuse me.’
That far greater utilization, so to speak, cannot come from local use, as we do not have enough local need. That far greater utilization, so to speak, cannot come from mere experimentation, as no local experiment could possibly justify a processing capacity so considerable.
In fact, there is only one method by which the additional capacity that Mr. Clapper wants could be ‘utilized’: through large-scale importation into Whitewater of other cities’ unwanted waste.