Synagro use of "waste energy" in Plainfield Township will deliver only $100k per year of potential revenue to local communities, and 100 tons of shit per day to farmland in eastern PA

Imagine that you live next to or near farms, and there is a plan to spread dried shit on those farms.  An "economic development" organization which came up with this plan explains that it will bring in revenue that otherwise would be lost, and in the process it will produce good quality jobs.  This is the claim.

Off the top, this sounds like a harebrained plan.  What price do you put on your quality of life, and what about your property values?  If your neighbor spreads shit on his property, will your property value:

• A. Go up
• B. Go down
• C. Stay the same
• D. Who the fuck cares, because this is economic development in someone's mind

The PA "Department of Environmental Protection" requires testing for only 9 trace elements and one synthetic compound (PCB's) in biosolids.  The fact that pathogens, endotoxins, and toxic chemicals remain in Class A biosolids after some bacteria are reduced by baking shit cake at 175 degrees:

• A. Sounds like something that requires much more research and regulation by the agencies that are supposed to protect my family's health, because this is like Russian Roulette
• B. Is unacceptable to remain in a product used to "fertilize" the land near my property
• C. Sounds scientific, but convince me I should be concerned
• D. Who the fuck cares, because this is economic development in someone's mind

A good quality, well paying job - what exactly is that?  If my family's health is degraded and our property's value goes down in order to provide someone a job elsewhere in town, is this a desirable job in the eyes of the community where it is located?   Now let's say the job is moving shit around in a factory that bakes shit cake 24 hours a day.  Trucks loaded with wet shit roll in and dump their load, the shit is conveyed around and baked, dried shit is lifted to lofty heights in buckets, and stored in shit silos for bulk delivery.  Is this a job I want my child to do?  Will this provide an opportunity for my child to go further than I did? 

• A. $35,000 a year is a great salary and will attract other new development and families to the area
• B. $35,000 a year is above the poverty level, so this is awesome - aim low
• C. This is "going further" than I ever did - I crapped for a day once when I had food poisoning, but these jobs will allow my son to be immersed in crap all day, every day.  A man shits, and it just goes down the drain.  But give a man a shovel, and he can move shit for life
• D. Who the fuck cares, because this is economic development in someone's mind

Green Knight announces that it expects about $100k a year revenue from partnering with shit processor

A Green Knight representative reported at a recent municipal meeting that in selling its waste energy to Synagro to bake shit, it expects on average to receive $100k in revenue per year or $274 per day.  Since Green Knight is supposed to support distressed citizens in three communities, that is a whopping $33,333 to benefit each town annually or $91 per day.  Per resident in Wind Gap, this is 3.4 cents per day, for Pen Argyl, 2.6 cents per day, and for Plainfield Township, 1.5 cents per day.  That is what you get in return for putting your water, air and health at risk, and coping with smelly trucks full of shit trundling around the Slate Belt.  And your property value going down the shitter. Now that is economic development, Green Knight and Waste Management style.

Are you frigging kidding?  That is a shade less than a single Synagro employee will earn for facilitating 133 tons of shit around in a shift at the plant at a job claimed to be good quality by the fools promoting this folly.  Meanwhile, all the neighbors and citizens have the distinction of living in Shitsville, USA, and enjoying all this entails - putrid smelling trucks hauling shit up and down their streets, farms laden with shit, shit absorbed into the ground and running off into streams.  Shit dust and odors wafting over hill and dale.

Economics do not add up unless Synagro is using a lot of natural gas

One debunked purported selling point of this shit was that this is a "green"project, using waste energy to recycle shit and everyone wins.  The "Slate Belt Heat Recovery Center" - bwa ha ha.  Does it seem logical that $274 of worth of waste energy can bake 400 tons of shit in a day?  As Home Depot advertising would say, "This is only $0.69 per ton!"  As will be shown in a separate post, if the Synagro plant were running on 100% natural gas, Synagro would pay about $8000 per day for the fuel to bake wet cake with an 18% solids concentration , or $20 per ton  (assuming a cost of $8 per 1000 cu ft - scale accordingly).  Synagro project manager Jim Hecht stated that this plant can run profitably on 100% natural gas.  Shit haulers are paid roughly $100 to $200+ per ton of wet crap hauled from a waste water treatment plant, depending on the distance hauled, so $20 in fuel costs to bake it is not prohibitive.

Conclusion - Green Knight is either supplying a tiny fraction of the total energy being used daily, or Green Knight (and the communities hosting this project through Green Knight's involvement) will be getting ripped off big time.  More "good economic development" in the name of supposed "green energy" according to very fuzzy logic.

Green Knight extended lease contract 20 years coincident with agreeing to partner with Synagro

The Green Knight Energy Center opened in 1999, and had a 20 year lease agreement with land owner Waste Management.  The landfill was expected to fill far sooner prior to latest landfill expansion and the 2008 recession.  At the current rate, it is estimated to fill several years later, in about 2030+/-.  The initial lease should expire next year.

In February 2017, Green Knight president Carlton Snyder stated that "We looked at contractual obligations when agreeing to partner with Synagro."  Not what is best to do for the community by this non-profit, but "contractual obligations".  Now it is reported that Green Knights have extended their lease 20 years.  That statement likely means that Waste Management either encouraged or required Green Knight to agree to work with Synagro in order to get its lease extended.  But would Waste Management really have not extended Green Knight's lease and shut down the energy center?  That would be horrible public relations.

Green Knight and Waste Management's concept of economic development is warped

The Grand Central landfill is a nuisance business - landfills always are.  So is a biosolids plant.  Nobody wants one in their community, which is why Synagro has desperately tried for 2 years to get its plant approved in Plainfield Township - this location is ideal to provide a gateway for redistributing CT, NY and NJ's shit across eastern PA.  Inviting a shit bakery to town is the polar opposite of economic development.   A handful of crappy jobs that are worse than virtually any other job you can name, the contamination of high quality streams and an aquifer at the proposed site, the contamination of the earth and stormwater where the product is applied to fields, and a minuscule $33,333 per year for each town to use for expenses or a fraction of the costs including benefits to provide a single decent job.

Not all development is good development.  Making the Slate Belt a less attractive place to live and do business is not economic development - it is tossing prospects for a better future away for the sake of Waste Management and Synagro making a shitload of money, and for Green Knight to continue so-called "economic development" in the self-serving manner the puppeteers at Waste Management envision it.  This is economic suicide, and Class A bullshit.

Your appearance goes to shit over time, but your community shouldn't also
Green Knights' vision is to literally develop the Slate Belt into Shitsville