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Minutes - Regular Meeting Solid Waste Advisory Board April 2, 2009 Approved May 7, 2009 burn when they do this . They get less residual and they get more electricity . To do that they have an extra step in the process which is to pelletize the waste . They felt 500 tons / day would be the limit as far as being economically viable . With the volume in Orange County they expect that we would need to form a regional agreement with others and the transfer station would still likely be required under that scenario . They have not built a 500 ton facility but estimated the cost would be $200 million with annual operation costs of $ 6 - $8 million . Once the site was selected and other things worked through they saw about a four year process to permit and construct. As a note going through this there was no one willing to speak to the time frame that was required for the entire process simply because the siting, financing, and other aspects are variable and fairly lengthy . Each one that we asked this question of would say once you have the vendor, site and all these things lined up then we could talk about how long it would take to permit and build . Other contacts were made . Plasma Arc is one of the technologies that shows a lot of promise as well as a couple of others but it is one of those that is just not there yet. They have been trying, but do not have a facility in this country . They have a specialized facility in Japan and one in Canada . They have been recently trying to construct a couple of facilities in Florida to make this work . One has totally fallen through and one has been reduced from 3 , 000 ton/ day capacity to 200 . That is an indication that it is still not ready for the marketplace i is countr n thy . Duke Energy offered encouragement but no real technical or financial support. They would like to see some things happen but are not in a position to help . UNC says that WtE is one of the things on their menu [of what] they are considering but see that as a long term [option] , which long term is 15 years plus before that would be in affect. IST Energy has an interesting package system which is not applicable to us but it shows that there is development of new technologies in the market place . It is a technology that has recently come out. It is a package plant that is located on site . They mentioned things such as an industrial site or an arena football stadium - a site that produces a small amount but consistent amount of waste . The package plants can handle about 2 tons a day and convert the waste to electricity there on site . The cost is about $800, 000 - $ 900, 000 for the 2 tons . Louis Zeller from the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense Fund came and spoke here advocating enhanced recycling as opposed to WtE . 3