Plans for Medical Waste to Energy Plant Scuttled

Apparently California's taste for alternative energy has its limits. While innovative new technologies that turn things like restaurant grease into energy have been embraced, it would appear that the line has been drawn at medical waste.

Inentec, LLC was to have built a $13 million plant outside of Red Bluff that would have done just that: turn (hazardous?) medical waste into energy through plasma gasification technology. The Sacramento Bee reports that the project has been spiked:

"Opposition to the Inentec project formed in 2005 after Tehama County granted the company a land-use permit and a declaration of "no significant environmental impact." Local air pollution regulators deemed the proposed plant safe, based on company-supplied emissions data from test runs of its prototypes.

Many Red Bluff area residents were outraged to learn that something as potentially hazardous as hospital waste – 10 to 20 tons of diseased organs, tissues and limbs and other infectious throwaways trucked in daily – had escaped their attention."

Energy firm drops plan for power plant near Red Bluff [Sacramento Bee]