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Warrenton develops pollution index
Warrenton develops pollution indexBy Bill Walsh
Times-Democrat Staff Writer
A metric tonne is 205 pounds heavier than the standard measurement in use in the United States. But even if the Town of Warrenton were annually putting 152,000 regular tons of pollution into the air, rather than 152,000 metric tonnes, the number would still be staggering.
Warrenton water plant operator Lance Albaugh, who has a long and abiding interest in alternative energy and is now overseeing the town's green iniative, came up with the figure in a report — five months in the making — that he prepared at the behest of Mayor George Fitch. It establishes Warrenton's baseline carbon footprint.
"We're a member of ICLEI, the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives, and they've got software that, as a member you are able to use," Albaugh said on Friday. "You collect all the information and enter it into this software, and it spits out your carbon footprint."
The information came from Dominion Virginia Power and other electricity providers; from natural gas companies; from VDOT; from the county landfill and other sources.
"We develop this footprint, and then the software also allows you to do some future forecasting about things that you are going to do to save energy," Fitch said.
Fitch said that the new report is a supporting document for an aggressive campaign to shrink the footprint.
"I haven't come across any community yet that has set as large and as aggressive a goal in its carbon footprint reduction as our 25 percent reduction by 2015," the mayor said last week. "We might be able to do it in 2012. We are going to have the fastest, most aggressive reduction of footprint. I think it is fair to say when we reach that goal that we are the greenest, most sustainable community out there."
Fitch's proposal to build a gasification plant at the county landfill is a huge part of that campaign.
"Depending on which study you look at, by not burying trash you either save a ton of GHG (greenhouse gases) per ton of trash, or you save 1.5 tons of GHG per ton of trash," he said.
In order to reach a 25-percent reduction goal, Warrenton has to eliminate about 37,000 tons from its 152,000-ton baseline, Fitch noted.
"We can get half of that right off the bat by having our 25,000 tons of trash turned over to the biomass plant, not buried. And by doing so, we're also reducing our carbon footprint by not using a fossil fuel – electricity – because you are generating X megawatts" of energy from the trash conversion, he said.
Fitch said he is "optimistic, and I think realistic," that Warrenton can reach the goal in a little more than three years. That, of course, assumes the county — which owns the landfill — goes along with the trash-to-energy plan he has proposed.
The county passed a resolution that generally endorsed Fitch's proposal months ago. Subsequently, the idea has been under review in the county planning offices.
Fitch is doing battle on other fronts in the meanwhile. Warrenton residents will see a household checklist in the fall issue of the newsletter The Town Crier, for instance.
"It's going to calculate the GHG emissions in your household," he said. "And by doing certain things, you can track how you can reduce that number. The average household emits something like 128 tons of GHG a year. If you lower your thermostat two degrees, you can drop that number by about eight tons. We are going to encourage [residents] to do that, and I think they will."
The business community, he added, is already on board.
"Other communities are out there offering tax credits and other kinds of goodies to get them to do the right thing," Fitch mused. "Here, people are doing things like geothermal heating and cooling without any kind of push from their local government.
"We've got a community that not only wants to do this, but is anxious to do it," Fitch said. "GHG reductions are not just going to come from government, but from households and businesses, also."
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