THE US company which has won contract to build a £113 million incinerator to burn Dublin's waste and generate 40 megawatts of electricity is refusing to comment on the project until later this week.
Foster Wheeler Power Systems, in New Jersey, was surprised by the announcement in Dublin 10 days ago when the Minister of State for Energy, Mr Emmet Stagg, "jumped the gun on us". But "we can live with it".
The term "waste-energy plant" is preferred to "incinerator". Environmental groups in the US which have been opposing similar plants were surprised that Foster Wheeler was involved in the Irish scheme.
They spoke of the "brutally expensive" procedure of turning waste into energy as well as potential health hazards.
However, a consultant who advised Warren County authorities in New Jersey, when Foster Wheeler was seeking permission to build a similar plant almost 10 years ago, said the standards on toxic emissions from these incinerators have now been raised under US regulations.
It was important that the Irish plant incorporate the latest safety equipment, a consultant and Rutgers University lecturer, Mr Stephen Krivanek, told The Irish Times.
He said Foster Wheeler "tend to use equipment one step down from the top. They build economy units". Two Foster Wheeler plants at Camden and Essex, New Jersey, were "both built with air pollution technology which was not the best". But the Camden unit was now being refitted to conform to the new more stringent standards.
It was now between "medium and good technology", Mr Krivanek said.
He said that the Foster Wheeler plant in Ireland should have the following features to ensure it was not a health hazard:
. A "spray dryer absorber to take lout acid gas like sulphur dioxide".
. A "baghouse" to remove harmful particles from the flue gases. But it was important that the bags be made of high-quality "expanded Teflon".
. A "carbon injection" system to absorb mercury which otherwise could get into the food chain through fish.
"If the standards in the Dublin plant are less than I have described, somebody should protest," Mr Krivanek said.
But he said many of the environmental groups in the US protesting against incinerators were behind the times and not taking into account the new, higher standards now being imposed on them by federal laws.
An attorney who was involved in a successful campaign by local people to prevent Foster Wheeler building an incinerator elsewhere in the US said the main objection was to the amount of mercury the plant would have emitted.
He had thought the company was getting out of running incinerators in the US.
Waste-energy plants were becoming a dubious economic operation following a Supreme Court decision banning "flow control" schemes obliging municipal authorities to supply waste to the incinerators.
This meant that the costs were now greater than alternative schemes such as landfill and recycling, the attorney said.
Ms Ellen Connett, who publishes an environmental newsletter, Waste Not said that companies building incinerators were now having to seek contracts outside the US, where "the citizens have basically won the battle" against them.
A recent government report had found, however, that the levels of poisonous dioxins were the lowest in western countries, but this was because there were no incinerators in Ireland, she said.
Ms Katie Cullen of the Integrated Waste Services Association in Washington which represents the incinerator companies said that Foster Wheeler had "a pretty good record" and was "very reliable".
It had a fairly new plant in Illinois "with all the necessary scrubbers", and the plant in Camden, New Jersey, which processed 1,000 tons of waste a day and generated 40 megawatts of electricity was having a "minor retro-fit" to conform to the new standards.
The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued the new regulations for the 130 waste-energy plants and ordinary incinerators last October.
The new standards should mean a reduction in emissions of air pollutants such as lead, mercury, sulphur dioxide and dioxin by 145,000 tons a year.
The rules, also known as MACT, standing for maximum achievable control technology, will be "among the toughest in the world" for waste-to-energy incinerators. The cost of "retro-fitting" the US plants to conform to the new rules is estimated at $488 million annually.
Asked if the standards used in the Dublin plant would conform to US standards, a staff member in Foster Wheeler said it was usual for their plants abroad to conform to the "local standards".
At present 20 per cent of municipal solid waste in the US is incinerated, 20 per cent is recycled and 60 per cent is landfilled.