MedRecycler-RI wants to build a medical-waste treatment plant in West Warwick. Up to 70 tons of blood, needles and other medical human and animal waste would be shipped in daily, shredded, dried and treated at high heat using a process known as pyrolysis, which breaks down the waste into gas that can be burned for electricity.
More than 270 people attended a virtual public hearing hosted by the R.I. Department of Environmental Management on March 15. Most of the comments opposed the project due to health and safety concerns.
But the company’s New Jersey-based parent and proponents say those concerns are unwarranted and also ignore the project’s benefits to the state and local community, including new jobs, tax revenue and power generation.
The state has two other medical-waste facilities. Both were approved more than 20 years ago.
This article leaves out why this medical waste facility is being opposed by so many. The affects of this project will take place not in West Warwick but in the surrounding communities of East Greenwich, West Greenwich, Coventry, and Warwick – with the exception of the building which is in West Warwick, even the driveway of the building is in another town. The building is directly across from residences and next to a preschool. There is no substantial partition separating this company from its neighbors in the building. RIDEM still has many unanswered questions that were in its letter to approve and the company has not been able to answer. Furthermore, according to the company’s own application, additional jobs will total about 20 (5 per shift) so other than short construction bits, it does not appear that there are substantial job gains. This is a project that the Commerce Corp RI promised $17M in pass through funding with no remedy for default. I do not think this company belongs here.
Excellent points! Plus it will operate 24 hours per day, initially processing 70 tons of medical waste – including diseased, bloody human and animal body parts, also aborted fetal parts, and more per day! So how many more tractor trailers will be traveling on our highways coming from all over the East coast and beyond, spewing more pollutants into our already polluted air? And what happens when one or more of those tractor trailers gets into an accident and the hazardous contents spill onto our roadways? This proposal is wrong on so many levels and certainly doesn’t belong in such a populated area. In fact, a facility like this, with all the potential hazards and health risks, belongs as far away from humans as possible.
SNPW should come forward to answer the issues resulting negative votes for the project. It sounds a decent project in general but must satisfy any health related issues raised by the residents. It’s time for SNPW to roll up their sleeves and work towards providing as much information as needed to change stakeholders perspective in their favor.
The public should be very, very concerned about an untested technology with so many unknowns and unanswered questions. The dangers that the emissions that will contain ; dioxins, mercury, lead, nitric oxides and produce many tons of Carbon Dioxide,(the equivalent of many thousands of cars) should be quite alarming. The health dangers of effluence, the various liquids of medical waste and decomposition that contain disease and pathogens that pose a risk both in transit and on site.
We have been told there will be testing to demonstrate that what ends up in the air will be safe. It is understood
how to test and validate for a single stream. You cannot validate for a multi stream that will vary in its composition , ratios ,density , and volume.
Too many times we have been told safe, tested only to find out years later down the road cancer clusters, birth defects, poisoned aquifers and harm to wildlife.
Without true scientific testing and validation in a controlled, contained pilot plant this technology is not ready, proper and prudent.
I am 100% in favor of the MedRecycle-RI plant. It is perfectly safe. What is dangerous is residential trash with the same stuff in it as Medical Waste, like E-Coli contaminated diapers mothers casually handle daily at home like they were nothing, but then the same mothers get all vocal about when it is listed as part of the medical waste, because of Ignorance. Ignorance among the public of the facts that are known to experts like me, is the problem, not the MedRecycle-RI plant.