Prison Trash Plant Proposal Is Given Boost : Environment: Proposed trash-to-energy facility at the Otay Mesa prison would dispose of 1,000 tons of garbage a day.

Putting 800 inmates to work sorting through tons of garbage by hand would make it economically feasible for the state to build a proposed $112-million trash-to-energy plant at the new Otay Mesa prison, concludes a study released Monday by the Prison Industry Authority.

The report also says that the unprecedented plant proposed for the Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility would provide a “major community benefit” by taking care of 1,000 tons of garbage a day, thus extending the effective life of the nearby Otay Landfill by three years.

“This here is a major step, from our standpoint,” Larry Harrison, chief of the prison authority’s new-industries implementation division, said about the consultant report prepared by Stone & Webster Engineering Corp. of Denver.

“Basically, what it says is that the economics are there to support the program, and the technologies that are being proposed are sound and workable,” said Harrison. “Their recommendation is that the state continue on and undertake the construction of this facility.”

With the green light given by its consultant, Harrison said the Prison Industries Authority will now start environmental reviews for the plant and begin negotiating with county officials to secure enough garbage for it. The proposed trash-to-energy facility could be built and operating by January, 1995, he said.

Monday’s report said the plant could be built on about 50 acres at the Donovan prison. Part of the compound would include what is tantamount to a new prison for 1,000 minimum-security inmates, who would be sent to Otay expressly for working at the plant, said Harrison.

“It is an indoor waste facility designed to dispose of 1,000 tons of municipal waste while, and at the same time, provide housing and incarcerating 1,000 inmates,” he said. “It’s a dual mission.”

The authority’s plan would charge garbage haulers a “tipping fee” to divert standard municipal garbage from the county--presumably garbage otherwise bound for the county’s Otay Landfill--and put prisoners to work sorting it mechanically and by hand for high-quality paper, aluminium, plastic, metal, wood and glass.

The sorting would be done in a proposed 250,000-square-foot, two-story building as part of an operation that the report said is “unprecedented in the United States” and could become a “model for other similar efforts throughout the country.

“With the (authority’s) waste plant concept, 72% of the waste stream currently being disposed of at the Otay Landfill will be recycled and reused without presorting or separation by the individual homeowner or business person,” the report said.

In addition, the proposed plant would help ease the county’s trash crisis by easing the burden from local dumps.

“Because the Otay Landfill is expected to close in 1998, the extension of the landfill life is a major community benefit to be derived from the waste recycle energy plant,” the report said. “By diverting 1,000 tons a day of municipal waste from that landfill to the project, the life of the Otay Landfill should be extended by about three years.”

Eight hundred prisoners would actually work on the garbage line, with the remaining 200 put on support jobs such as running the kitchen. Those working on garbage “picking lines” would be given protective clothing similar to that used in smaller-scale private recycling operations.

Inmates would be paid 50 cents an hour, the common prison wage that “provides significant economic benefit to the project,” the consultant report says. “Use of inmate labor will minimize the cost of an operation to recover waste materials, which is a very high environmental priority and may not be possible without the low-cost labor and management that (the authority) can bring.”

What cannot be salvaged at the proposed plant--mostly food scraps and soiled paper--would be put into six anaerobic digesters, which would also be used to process the 500,000 gallons a day of sewage created by Donovan.

The organic material will create methane gas, allowing the plant to make steam and generate electricity at its own cogeneration facility.

What is left in the bottom of the digester will then be put into a 20-acre greenhouse to be turned into humus to be sold as a soil additive for turf farms and wetlands reclamation.