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021 <br /> far to obtain a license for the site it had intended to use <br /> next. Durham County has no remaining landfill space, and an <br /> engineering study done for the City of Durham predicts that <br /> its current landfill site will last only five more years. <br /> Orange County is now participating in a Regional Solid <br /> Waste Task Force, which also includes representatives from <br /> the City of Durham, Durham County, Chapel Hill, Carrboro, <br /> Hillsborough and UNC-CH. This group has commissioned a <br /> study of regional waste management problems and possible <br /> solutions, including the possible use of incineration and <br /> recycling to reduce waste stream volumes entering landfills. <br /> The university representatives are non-voting members. <br /> Orange County now faces an excellent opportunity to <br /> examine the feasibilty of burning locally produced solid <br /> waste to generate power. UNC-CH plans to convert its <br /> present pulverized coal burning power plant to a cleaner, <br /> more efficient fluidized combustion boiler system by 1991, <br /> which as currently designed, will also burn pulverized coal . <br /> While it is true that fluidized combustion boilers must be <br /> designed to burn specific fuels and should then burn only <br /> those fuels, it is also true that these boilers can be <br /> designed to produce usable energy by burning solid waste, in <br /> the form of refuse-derived fuels (RDF) . Task force members <br /> have urged university officials to seriously consider <br /> burning refuse-derived fuels. <br /> University officials have indicated that the engineering <br /> study done for UNC-CH does not view waste-to-energy power <br /> generation to be economically viable for the school at this <br /> time. In his letter to the task force (Appendix D) Claude <br /> Swecker, Associate Vice-Chancellor for Facilities Management <br /> at UNC-CH, outlined the school's three main reasons for <br /> rejecting the notion of redesigning the new boilers to <br /> accomodate RDF: <br /> (1) Since neither the University nor the County <br /> currently has a facility for producing RDF, and neither has <br /> any plans for such a facility, there would be no guaranteed <br /> fuel source for the new boilers. <br /> (2) Swecker claims that RDF may produce widely varying <br /> amounts of heat, due to the fuel's unknown composition. <br /> This is a point of debate. Some currently operating waste- <br /> to-energy facilities have reported acceptably consistent <br /> heat contents from carefully processed refuse-derived fuels. <br /> (3) University officials claim that the school's <br /> additional power needs are too urgent to allow for any <br /> significant change in the plant's engineering plans. <br /> In fiscal year 1985, the University produced nearly 20 <br /> percent (12,000 tons) of the solid waste buried at the <br /> Orange County Regional Landfill . Of that, about 6500 tons, <br /> one-tenth of the county's total, consisted of ash from the <br /> school's power plant. <br /> The power plant's new boilers will only increase this <br /> burden on the landfill . Fluidized bed combustion requires <br /> the injection of limestone during the combustion process in <br /> order to capture and neutralize gaseous pollutants produced <br />