Here is a portion of a letter I wrote to our Senators and may be good for Mr. Chakroff to read and reply to:

Our Senators are considering the Alpine WTE land lease which is the offspring of both WAPA and VIWMA inabilities to function optimally and/or to bolster them, if you will.

$20million PLUS seems an awful lot of money to bolster WAPA while providing a minimal amount of electricity to only 1 island out of 4 that shall be paying the considerable and exorbitant costs.

If I were a Senator and contemplating spending millions of dollars ($20M and more) of taxpayer money, all the while having experts that are giving us free technical information with no gain or profit to themselves, telling us that we are being led astray with Alpine's facts and figures, as well as VIWMA's and before I would commit to spend any money that in reality, belongs to the people that I have been elected to represent, on anything to further indebt those people of the VI, I would want to know exactly how these 2 entities are performing with the excessive amounts of money it apparently takes to run them, see what can be done to minimize those financial losses within those 2 entities PRIOR to committing the VI Tax and Rate payers to more long term debt in light of our present financial crisis', and create a more toxic solution to managing our waste.

The proper way to do this is to order FORENSIC AUDITS OF WAPA & VIWMA!

Note: We are still paying VIWMA huge amount of money just to truck our garbage from point A to point B and nothing else.
Now that we have to truck it from points A, B and C then ship it to D, what's that going to cost to only benefit STX with a marginal energy supply, at best?

May Cornwall, herself, under oath misled the senators when she stated that the land lease was necessary before ALPINE could submit their emissions data to EPA.

Alpine has no track record since they have never built and put online a WTE plant so their performance cannot be identified by prior history.

Every article I have read on WTE plants points out the the following environmental impacts:

Environmental Impact
Burning solid waste produces nitrogen oxides and sulfur dioxide as well as trace amounts of toxic pollutants such as mercury compounds and dioxins.

The nature of the waste burned affects the composition of its emissions. If batteries or other materials containing heavy metals are burned, particularly toxic materials can be released into the air. Some of these materials, such as dioxins, furans and metals, do not degrade quickly when released, and may be deposited on plants and in water. Animals and fish may absorb them, and humans may be exposed if they eat the contaminated animals or fish.

Particulate matter, hydrogen chloride, carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxides also can be released into the air and absorbed into the environment.

Waste-to-energy power plants use water in boilers and in cooling. When this water is discharged, its higher temperature and pollutants it contains can harm aquatic life and reduce water quality.

Are our Senators willing to risk ANY contamination when "the composting, 3-R approach is reportedly $10.3 million (according to LWVoters) cheaper per year."

"The way the League of Women Voters testified a few weeks ago during the evening hearing was effective because they made the statement that Composting 3-R was $10.3 million cheaper than Alpine's Deal, and they put it in writing and answered questions on it. They started building credibility."

Let's not forget we depend on tourism and why do they come here? Our beautiful beaches, water and sunshine. I am sure they would like them to be clean and safe? I know I do!

Do we risk polluting them vs. learning to recycle, create more jobs in the process, improve the economy and lessen the environmental and toxic impacts to all of our islands?

Do we go with the 3 R's and create more jobs in our perilously declining economy and possibly SAVE $10Million or more a year?

That savings in money could be used to subsidize solar energy or upgrades to WAPA, if managed properly.

The $20Million plus that we saved by not having Alpine's WTE could go directly to improving WAPA's performance and other less hazardous, energy saving, cost effective measures.

Don't you and the other senators think that is worth doing?

Please tell me what are we going to do with the highly toxic ash created by burning waste?

Please tell me if any Senator wants to live within the wind range of the emissions of a WTE plant?

If not, then don't do it to someone else!

What happens to our water in our cisterns, our ground water and the water of the oceans that surround us?

What happens to the children of the Virgin islands, most of which already live below the poverty levels?

Do we expose them to pollution and toxins in our drinking water, air, land and oceans?

How do we protect our cistern water which is collected from our roof tops from harmful emissions?

Are all of our Senators willing to risk this, at this point in time, without, at the very least, giving the lesser of evils, the recycling options a try?

I do not believe that at this time, given the financial constraints, that our economy can financially afford to invest our hard-earned money into something with such great potential to be a such detriment to our beautiful Virgin Islands and its people when there are other alternatives that do not pose such a hazard or are so costly that are available to us as well as having the valuable resource of people willing, ready and able to devote significant time and energy, FOR FREE!.

Indeed, in our present climate of financial crisis' that is impacting each and every person living in the Virgin islands, would not the prudent option be to create or sponsor a bill or create a directive to VIWMA to work with the recycling partnerships that are offering their help and innovative "green and clean" technologies for a period of 2-3 years in order to assess their performance?

Is that not a better alternative than creating more of a cycle of debt that we cannot afford to shoulder?

Here are a couple of links you might find interesting and informative reading:

http://www.no-burn.org/section.php?id=132

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/report-surge-in-maryland-waste-t...

http://inhabitat.com/bigs-waste-to-energy-ski-slope-incinerator-scrapped...

http://www.policyalternatives.ca/publications/monitor/waste-energy-incin...

http://www.savethepinebush.org/Action/Landfill/Travers02-21-06.html

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/the_green_lantern/2008/...

http://www.watershedsentinel.ca/content/incinerators-waste-energy-propos...

There are many more that I can provide if you care, however the central theme seems to be evident: It is better to recycle than to pollute at a high monetary, environmental and health cost!