May 25 - McClatchy-Tribune Regional News - Todd Milbourn The Sacramento Bee, Calif.

A Sacramento city councilwoman visited a Japanese energy plant last week to watch plasma torches vaporize garbage at temperatures hotter than the sun's surface. She returned more confident that the technology could help her hometown solve its garbage dilemma.

"It's clearer than the Campbell's Soup plant," said Lauren Hammond, comparing the puff of white steam coming out of the Ushanti plasma gasification plant with that of the landmark factory on Franklin Boulevard.

The Sacramento City Council will vote Tuesday on whether to continue negotiating with a Sacramento firm that wants to make California's capital the first American city to use plasma torches to zap its garbage.

Sacramento sends 146,000 tons of residential trash every year to a desert dump in western Nevada, a practice that city officials themselves say is unsustainable because of air pollution and rising fuel prices.

City officials are negotiating with the city's private hauler and Sacramento County to reroute the garbage to Kiefer Landfill in Sloughhouse, 19 miles from downtown.

But U.S. Science and Technology, a Sacramento firm, says building a plasma plant is a better option, because it would eliminate the need for a landfill and produce electricity that could be sold back to the grid.

USST says investors looking for a piece of the growing alternative energy market would finance the plant, estimated to cost $150 million to $200 million.

"The fact that this is Sacramento, the capital of California, a city that wants to show green leadership ... it's a perfect time to boldly test this capability," said Bill Ludwig, a former executive director of the Rice Growers Association of America who founded USST two years ago.

The city entered a 90-day exclusive negotiating arrangement with USST in February. Tuesday's vote will determine whether to extend that negotiating period another 90 days to delve deeper into the commercial viability of the project.

Although cities from Los Angeles to International Falls, Minn. have considered plasma plants, so far only Florida's St. Lucie County has approved construction. The same companies involved in that plant -- Jacoby Energy Development Inc. and AlterNRG -- are providing the technical backing for USST's proposal in Sacramento.

Environmental groups that have studied "plasma arc gasification" technology urge city leaders to take a deep breath. The technology remains unproven, they say.

Scott Smithline, a Sacramento environmentalist who has reviewed USST's proposal, said he's open to the idea of a plasma plant but fears it would shift focus away from what should be trash priorities No. 1 and 2: reducing consumption and boosting recycling.

"If we've promised our residential waste stream (to a plasma plant), what's the incentive to move material from the green (waste) bin to the blue (recycling) bin?" asked Smithline, director of legal and regulatory affairs for Sacramento-based Californians Against Waste.

Ludwig acknowledged that "there's a risk there." But he said the plasma plant also could be fed by digging up trash from old landfills -- such as the one at 28th and B streets.

"We're building in flexibility," he said.

Lou Circeo, a Georgia Tech University professor who's researched plasma technology since 1971, said the main byproducts of the plasma process are steam, slag -- a rocky material made of heavy metals -- and syngas, which can be burned to run an electricity-producing turbine.

"Emissions are very similar to what you get with natural gas, which as you know is the cleanest fossil fuel," said Circeo, who also serves as an unpaid adviser to USST.

USST paid for Hammond and Edison Hicks, Sacramento's integrated waste general manager, to visit the Hitachi Metals waste-to-energy plant in Utashinai, Japan.

While several residents of her district complained about the trip, Hammond said, "You're not going to understand this unless you see it."

Hicks said he was impressed by the 6-year-old facility, which uses plasma torches to vaporize trash and car parts.

"From what I've seen so far, the technology works, and the regulations -- so far at least -- aren't a fatal flaw," Hicks said. "It's still worth exploring."