Weekly News Bulletin: Aug. 28-Sep. 3, 2012

 

Advanced Disposal Names New Leadership Team

Concurrent with its recent acquisition of Veolia, Advanced Disposal has named its senior leadership team. In July, Highstar Capital's subsidiary Star Atlantic Waste Holdings II announced its $1.91 billion acquisition of Veolia's US solid waste operations to be merged with its own portfolio companies Interstate Waste Services (Basking Ridge, NJ), and Advanced Disposal (Jacksonville, FL) to create a combined operation with $1.4 billion in annual revenue under the Advanced Disposal name. Charles Appleby, currently president and CEO of Advanced Disposal, will serve as chairman and CEO of the new company. Richard Burke, who was Veolia's president and CEO, will serve as president. Wally Hall, COO of Advanced, will remain in that capacity. Similarly, Steve Carn, CFO of Advanced, and Mary O'Brien, chief marketing officer at Advanced, will hold their respective positions in the new company. Finally, Scott Friedlander, general council of Interstate Waste, will serve in the same role at the new company...Read More »

 

 

Matty the Horse, Mob Muscle behind Waste Cartel, Dead at 92

Matthew Ianniello aka "Matty the Horse," the muscle behind a hauling cartel in Connecticut and New York, among many other nefarious exploits, is dead at 92. Ianniello was a reputed Genovese crime boss who earned his name from an early career as an enforcer. Over a 50-year span, he was convicted of rigging construction bids, skimming union dues and extorting protection money from bar owners, pornography shops and topless dancers. After the imprisonment of the longtime Genovese family leader Vincent Gigante in 1997, Ianniello served as acting boss of the crime family. He was later accused of having been paid a "mob tax" from associates of trash kingpin James Galante who operated a so-called "property rights" scheme to enforce collusion among local hauling "carting" companies to ensure that they agreed to keep prices higher and not poach one another's business. Galante and others are serving prison sentences on racketeering and other charges related to the scheme. An FBI wiretap captured Ianniello advising one member that he would "live longer" by cooperating...Read More »

 

 

EPA Officials Describe New Enforcement Strategy

EPA sees improved data as the means to improve compliance with environmental laws, along with "more effective" and "simpler" rules and permitting requirements. The emerging "next generation" strategy seeks to improve waning compliance rates without burdening the agency's already constrained enforcement budget. Cynthia Giles, assistant administrator of EPA's Office of Enforcement & Compliance Assurance (OECA) said during a recent web conference that "the rates of non-compliance that we see are a serious issue that tell us we need to develop new strategies." She sees a direct correlation between programs with strong discharge monitoring report data and higher compliance rates. "This isn't a new problem, but it's growing increasingly important. Our data on non-compliance is incomplete and incomplete data is itself a problem," she said.

The effort is also driven in part by dwindling federal funds, which includes reductions to OECA's budget. The agency's existing budget is $8.4 billion for fiscal year 2012, though President Obama has proposed reducing it further to $8.3 billion for fiscal year 2013, which Giles has said would result in scaling back of some enforcement actions...Read More »

 

 

Waste Management Invests in Renmatix Waste-to-Fuel Technology

Waste Management, Inc. (Houston, TX) is making another alternative energy play with an investment in Renmatix Inc., which is developing systems to convert refuse into sugars that can be processed into fuel. Waste Management participated in a $75 million funding round, although the specific investment was not disclosed. Renmatix is a manufacturer of bio-based sugar intermediates, an alternative to petroleum derivates for the global chemical and fuels markets.

The company's Plantrose technology uses "supercritical" water to deconstruct a wide range of non-food plant material in a continuous reaction into base sugars. Under its agreement with Waste Management, Renmatix will use food scraps, construction debris and pulp and paper waste that Waste Management collects in urban areas as a feedstock for its cellulosic biofuel process. The agreement expands on Waste Management's investments in at least eight other ventures that are developing systems to convert waste into fuel, electricity or higher value products. Earlier this year, the company estimated that the 112 million tons of waste it collected in 2011 would be worth more than $40 billion if it was all processed into energy...Read More »

 

 

Federal Judge Rules TVA Liable for Kingston Coal Ash Spill

A federal court has found the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), the nation's largest public utility, liable for the massive 2008 coal ash spill near Kingston, TN, which released 5.4 million cubic yards of sludge into the surrounding countryside. Caused by the failure and collapse of an embankment holding wet coal ash, the huge spill covered over 300 acres of land with toxic sludge and is expected to require over $1.2 billion in cleanup costs. U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Varlan said in a written opinion that TVA was negligent in its conduct and will be liable for damages to be determined later. Last year he ruled that TVA was protected from liability for its coal ash management policies and its decisions to keep the wet coal ash storage system running; however, TVA could be liable for other decisions that caused the embankment failure and resulting spill. In his latest decision, he wrote that "Had TVA followed its own mandatory policies, procedures, and practices, the subsurface issues underlying the failure of North Dike would have been investigated, addressed, and potentially remedied before the catastrophic failure of December 22, 2008." That spill has drawn national attention to the issue including congressional scrutiny. EPA is currently considering how to regulate coal ash more stringently...Read More »

 

 

Waste Management Tells Investors to Reject 'Mini-Tender Offer' by TRC Capital

Waste Management, Inc. (Houston, TX) is advising investors against accepting a so-called "mini-tender offer" by TRC Capital Corporation which seeks to buy up to 3 million or about 0.65 percent of its outstanding common stock at $33 per share. The company said that TRC's offering price is 4.62 percent below its closing share price as of August 20, the day prior to the offer which is subject to many conditions. The company further cautioned investors that mini-tender offers, in general, are structured to avoid many of the investor protections required of bigger offers with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and other procedures under US securities laws...Read More »

 

 

Wheelabrator Wins New Contract with Broward County, FL

Wheelabrator Technologies, a subsidiary of Waste Management, said it won a 5-year contract from Broward County, FL. It will take effect next year when its existing 20-year contract with the county is set to expire. Wheelabrator's Broward County facility processes about 4,500 tons of waste per day into enough energy to power 100,000 homes. Under the agreement, the Broward County Commission agreed to extend the same terms and conditions to its local municipalities. The plant also recycles about 30,000 tons of metal annually...Read More »

 

 

Republic Partners with Clean Energy to Build Landfill Gas-to-Fuel Plant in Tenn.

Republic Services Inc (Phoenix, AZ) has signed an agreement with Clean Energy Renewable Fuels (CERF) which will build a landfill gas-to-fuel plant at Republic's North Shelby Landfill in Millington, TN. CERF is a subsidiary of Clean Energy (Seal Beach, CA). Once production begins in late 2013, the high-BTU plant will produce about 4 million diesel gallon equivalents of renewable natural gas fuel in its first year, rising to more than 5.7 million diesel gallon equivalents annually during its first 10 years of operation. In July Clean Energy announced its future expansion plans including a dozen new and existing facilities with Republic...Read More »

 

 

Waste Management Opens CNG Station and Expands Fleet in Mesa, AZ

Waste Management, Inc. (Houston, TX) opened a new public-access compressed natural gas (CNG) fueling station in Mesa, AZ, just east of Phoenix and debuted its new fleet of 26 CNG-powered waste collection vehicles to serve the market, including Chandler (to the south). The Clean N' Green public fueling station was built in partnership with fuel distributor PetroCard Inc (Kent, WA). The two opened a similar facility earlier this month in Louisville, KY.

Waste Management announced earlier this year that 90 percent of the company's new fleet purchases over the next five years will be for CNG vehicles as the company expands its fleet of CNG vehicles to 30,000 from its present number of 1,700...Read More »

 

 

Cedar Rapids / Linn County, Iowa Plan 1.6 MW Landfill Gas-to-Energy Plant

The Cedar Rapids/Linn County Solid Waste Agency of Iowa plans to build a 1.6 megawatt landfill gas-to-energy plant at its Marion landfill. The $3 million plant will produce enough electricity to power 1,000 homes while heat from the generator will be recycled to warm the agency's new Resource Recovery Center building, currently under construction...Read More »

 

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