Solid waste agency signs contract that could turn wood debris from some flood-wrecked homes into electricity

Wood debris from the expected demolition of more than 1,000 flood-wrecked Cedar Rapids homes in the coming months and years may yet turn into energy.

The Cedar Rapids/Linn County Solid Waste Agency on Tuesday approved a contract to sell at least 6,000 tons of ground-up wood in the next year to a Cassville, Wis., plant that will burn it to produce electricity.

DTE Energy Services of Ann Arbor, Mich., has converted what had been an old coal-fired plant in Cassville, Wis., to one that will burn biomass like ground-up wood, and DTE is seeking wood waste from a 90-mile radius, Karmin McShane, executive director of the local solid waste agency said Tuesday.

The solid waste agency's move lets it take an initial stab at seeing waste converted to energy at a time when local studies are under way to see if biomass, sewage sludge and even municipal garbage might be converted into electricity here locally.

The agency will grind wood from a variety of sources, and for now, no wood will come from flood-wrecked homes. But the thought is some wood from those homes will be included in the mix as the agency experiments and determines that wood without lead-based paint from older homes can be used.

In its contract with DTE, the agency will receive $4 a ton for the wood waste, which DTE will pay to truck from the agency's Site 1 landfill and compost operation on A Street SW to the Wisconsin plant. The agency already has had a wood grinding operation in place as part of its compost operation at the A Street SW site.

The solid waste agency has received a loan package from the Iowa Department of Natural Resources to help cover new costs in what the DNR is calling the Regional Biomass Recovery Demonstration Project.

The loans consist of a $20,000 forgivable loan, a $150,000 zero-interest loan and a $93,760 loan at 3-percent interest.

A new staff person will be hired to check loads coming to the grinding site to make sure that none of the wood destined to become renewable energy has lead or arsenic contamination, McShane said.

She said the operation should encourage contractors to separate construction debris so that the wood debris can be diverted from the landfill. The agency charges $35 a ton to place items in the landfill, but only $15 a ton to grind up waste wood for use in the renewable energy effort, she noted.

One of the big community savings in turning waste wood into energy is that it extends the life of the agency's existing landfills, McShane said.