HERC - Hennepin Energy Recovery Center

[VacantLuxuries]

Not only did the legislature put a 2040 expiration date on the HERC by refusing to classify incinerators as clean energy, but they also are requiring Hennepin County to create a closure plan in order to access $26 million in bonding bill money for an anaerobic digester project.

https://sahanjournal.com/climate-enviro ... ding-bill/

[NickP]

Will this affect Target Field heating? I thought HERC heated it.

[blo442]

HERC presents challenges to redevelopment for sure, one of them being the use of waste heat for the turf at Target Field, sidewalk snowmelt around the LRT station, and maybe heating indoor spaces at Target Field. (been a while since I took a HERC tour, memory fuzzy) Not sure if all this could be fed using the downtown steam system's existing capacity, or if a new steam plant would be needed on the site. Other challenges are the multi-story grade difference from the high point at Target Field Station plaza to the low point on 6th Ave, and the LRT infrastructure which forms a concrete wall around 2/3 of the perimeter. It would take a visionary development on the level of North Loop Green to turn this into a pleasant urban space.

On the other hand, Timberwolves ownership has to be pretty happy about the HERC potentially closing in the next decade. I imagine this site looks great from an arena developer's perspective. It's one of the largest superblocks anywhere near downtown, transit & parking infrastructure is already built out, the grade change/LRT wall along 6th Ave provides a natural location for heavy-duty service & loading infrastructure, and there's plenty of underutilized land nearby for ownership to redevelop and turn a profit. Purely uninformed speculation, but seems awfully plausible to me.

[Mdcastle]

I guess shoving waste into the ground in a landfill is better than burning it and getting heat and electricity from it, greatly compacting the size, and recovering the metal from it.

[Trademark]

HERC presents challenges to redevelopment for sure, one of them being the use of waste heat for the turf at Target Field, sidewalk snowmelt around the LRT station, and maybe heating indoor spaces at Target Field. (been a while since I took a HERC tour, memory fuzzy) Not sure if all this could be fed using the downtown steam system's existing capacity, or if a new steam plant would be needed on the site. Other challenges are the multi-story grade difference from the high point at Target Field Station plaza to the low point on 6th Ave, and the LRT infrastructure which forms a concrete wall around 2/3 of the perimeter. It would take a visionary development on the level of North Loop Green to turn this into a pleasant urban space.

On the other hand, Timberwolves ownership has to be pretty happy about the HERC potentially closing in the next decade. I imagine this site looks great from an arena developer's perspective. It's one of the largest superblocks anywhere near downtown, transit & parking infrastructure is already built out, the grade change/LRT wall along 6th Ave provides a natural location for heavy-duty service & loading infrastructure, and there's plenty of underutilized land nearby for ownership to redevelop and turn a profit. Purely uninformed speculation, but seems awfully plausible to me.

I have to imagine that it would probably require a significant amount of time for them to do clean up after they close it before it's ready for redevelopment

[HuskyGrad]

I guess shoving waste into the ground in a landfill is better than burning it and getting heat and electricity from it, greatly compacting the size, and recovering the metal from it.

I’m curious how the additional emissions from transporting to a non-central location compares to those from HERC today.

[VacantLuxuries]

I think the challenge with environmental projects is that there's different lenses through which to view environmental problems. It's easy to fall into a binary of "more emissions bad/less emissions good" (or in a worse example we're all familiar with, grass lawn good, concrete tall building bad) when there's other ways to look at the problem.

The legislation that's required Hennepin to put an expiration date on the HERC specifically singled it out. It calls for the closure of incinerators whose pollution affects areas of social and environmental justice (i.e., North Minneapolis), and HERC is the only incinerator whose pollution affects areas of concentrated poverty. Is it better to make it so real people who are breathing poison today breathe less of it, or to tunnel vision ourselves into only looking at the emissions numbers and justify continuing to poison them on that justification alone?

I would argue that unless the alternative would generate a massive, inconceivable amount more emissions than the status quo, choosing to not poison people directly is the better choice.

If HERC shut down today and we were using existing waste management infrastructure to move the garbage somewhere else, the natural gas trucks may emit more emissions than the HERC itself would. However, given how quickly fleets and municipal vehicles are advancing towards electric and/or hydrogen solutions, that's not guaranteed to be the case in 2035-2040 when the closure actually happens. And because vehicles are easier to update and replace than an incinerator, there's a much greater chance that the alternate solution will become less carbon intensive over time as opposed to expecting the HERC to do the same thing.

There's also the fact that Hennepin is attempting to redouble their waste reduction and recycling efforts after reports that they haven't been meeting their stated goals. Being able to say "Well we get rid of the trash in an incinerator and that was called "green" in the legislation, so we can pretend this is an environmentally clean solution" has been a crutch they've relied on for too long. If they suddenly have to try and find more landfill capacity, they might actually get more serious about other solutions to waste reduction, even if it means fighting unpopular political battles over single use plastic or investing in facilities that can recycle more kinds of materials.

TL;DR, I have way more faith that we'd be able to reduce and mitigate any emissions or environmental effects of more trucks/landfill than I do that the HERC will someday magically create less pollution that nearby neighborhoods have to breathe.

[twincitizen]

Are people in fact breathing poison from HERC? I was under the impression that the exhaust systems are pretty sophisticated and have been upgraded over the years. The biggest source of emissions related to HERC operations could very well be the garbage trucks coming and going, and those emissions would likely dwarfed by the Metro Transit bus garages across the street.

[VacantLuxuries]

173,254 tons of CO2, 404 tons of nitrous oxide, and 21 tons of PM2.5 in 2019.

I don't know. I wouldn't like to live next to it. I guess if the people who put a concerted effort into getting this result also don't want to live nearby a garbage burner, I'm not going to "well actually" about other nearby sources of pollution being worse. While I'm sure we're many decades out from it, at the very least the bus facility has the potential to switch to cleaner fuels. The garbage burner, by design, will always burn garbage.

I'm sure the some of the metal that would have been shredded at the Minneapolis Northern Metal location now emits more net emissions if it travels a further distance on its way to Becker now, but it's still better that they're no longer operating in a densely populated area.

[SurlyLHT]

173,254 tons of CO2, 404 tons of nitrous oxide, and 21 tons of PM2.5 in 2019.

I don't know. I wouldn't like to live next to it. I guess if the people who put a concerted effort into getting this result also don't want to live nearby a garbage burner, I'm not going to "well actually" about other nearby sources of pollution being worse. While I'm sure we're many decades out from it, at the very least the bus facility has the potential to switch to cleaner fuels. The garbage burner, by design, will always burn garbage.

I'm sure the some of the metal that would have been shredded at the Minneapolis Northern Metal location now emits more net emissions if it travels a further distance on its way to Becker now, but it's still better that they're no longer operating in a densely populated area.

I live in North and I'm not worried about it. 394 and 55 are worse. Also the wind blows predominantly from the West not the East! It's going across the river to NE often. NE also has the Gas plant too, which I am guessing folks complained at some point about polluting North? But I haven't heard anything lately, also also cleaner than it's predecessor. Are there any other power plants in Minneapolis?

[Silophant]

Yeah, HERC is massively overblown as a pollution source relative to the freeways and Riverside plant, etc.

Other power plants in Minneapolis include the Main Energy Plant on the East Bank campus (natural gas) SE Steam Plant by the Stone Arch Bridge (barely ever runs) and a hydro plant on each of the three dams.

[Nick]

I always remember a MinnPost article from ages ago citing a study saying that 99% of Northsiders “have or know someone who has asthma” as an example of the hard-hitting, data-driven thinking around HERC.

[twincitizen]

Hennepin County wrestles with future of Minneapolis waste incinerator: https://www.mprnews.org/story/2023/09/2 ... ncinerator

[Bob Stinson's Ghost]

HERC has always seemed like a zero sum proposition to me. Yes, it drastically reduces weight and volume while generating a tiny amount of electricity, but the resulting ash is drastically more toxic, requiring a special type of landfill.

When HERC was built a lot of us thought that plastics recycling would continue to expand and it would be starved for fuel. But now, decades later the state of plastic recycling has hardly changed. Probably the best fate for a used polybag is to be incinerated at high temperature. As long as refineries are making gasoline and diesel the price of brand new plastic will be so low that no recycled material can compete.

Ultimately the phase out seems like it has more to do with civic vanity than anything else. People come from other cities to see the Twins play and ask quite logical questions about what goes on in that big industrial facility, and it's a bit embarrassing to admit that it's a garbage burner. It doesn't fit with the image of Minneapolis as an environmental leader.

[amiller92]

It is always strange to me how the anti-HERC rhetoric never acknowledges the fancy neighborhood that has grown up around it.

[BoredAgain]

People come from other cities to see the Twins play and ask quite logical questions about what goes on in that big industrial facility, and it's a bit embarrassing to admit that it's a garbage burner. It doesn't fit with the image of Minneapolis as an environmental leader.

You can always tell them that it's a centralized steam generating facility that efficiently provides heat and hot water and even cooling for over 100 downtown buildings, including the stadium that they are enjoying. In addition, one that isn't fueled by dinosaur bones.

[Nick]

Which I also haven't heard much about--there are non-garbage ways to produce steam (there are other steam plants downtown) but presumably the electricity for that comes from somewhere?

[thespeedmccool]

I don't think it should be controversial to say that a garbage burner isn't the highest and best land use for this large site in the state's hottest urban neighborhood.

HERC may have some positive externalities which would have to be replaced should it move, but c'mon people, let's not be obtuse. It's an eyesore, an environmentally questionable installation, and a huge barrier to connecting the Royalston Station area to downtown. It generates zero foot traffic and is literally a fenced industrial compound on what could be an iconic gateway lot as you enter downtown from the west. No one will miss HERC when it gets relocated to a field on I-94 in Rogers.

[HuskyGrad]

We could replace it with our very own CopenHill.

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-49877318


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[Silophant]

Which I also haven't heard much about--there are non-garbage ways to produce steam (there are other steam plants downtown) but presumably the electricity for that comes from somewhere?

I believe the other downtown steam plants are natural gas-fired (in Minneapolis, at least - the downtown St. Paul plant uses wood chips from metro-area tree trimming). They're definitely not electric, though presumably (hopefully?) someone is planning for that.