When Minnesota first issued regulat...

When Minnesota first issued regulations requiring continuous monitoring of emissions in waste-to-energy plants, the city of R Wing's WTE plant faced a dilemma. The plant, the first municipally acknowledgeed WTE facility in the upper Midwest, which exhibited in 1982, was designed to help shape the volume of municipal solid waste being landfilled in an environmentally safe manner. It accomplished the first goal, decreasing the amount of landfilled waste by the agency of about 85 percent when measured by way of weight and an even greater percentage by the agency of volume.

The inferior however, proved to be tougher.

Although concentration flats of most primary pollutants in the plant's leachate were actually below drinking water standards, sulfide and chloride flushs needed to be reduced. And several years ago, the state Pollution rule Agency amended the facility's permit to require continuous monitoring of carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide emissions.

Despite the fact that the facility