Virginia officials terminate contract with RePower South

The Southeastern Public Service Authority’s (SPSA’s) board, Chesapeake, Virginia, decided to terminate its deal with RePower South, a Spartanburg, South Carolina-based recycling and renewable energy company, after the company began running behind on meeting key terms within the contract, a report by the Virginian-Pilot says. The board for the authority, which serves eight municipalities from Virginia Beach to Franklin, agreed on the termination through a 10-6 vote.

RePower proposed a $100 million mixed waste processing facility on the southern branch of the Elizabeth River in Chesapeake. According to the report, sorting equipment at the facility would have separated recyclables from waste and would create fuel pellets from the paper and plastics. The fuel pellets would have been used alongside coal at a Dominion Energy power plant.

The authority alleges that RePower struggled to adhere to the timeline in the contract that was approved by its board in May 2016, the report says. Board member Randy Keaton says in the report that he approached RePower and asked them to show proof that its proposal was still viable, but RePower said its pellet supply agreement with Dominion did not work out.

Jim Bohlig, chief development officer of RePower South, says in the report that Dominion informed the company it would not move forward with the agreement. While RePower had another customer for the pellets, Bohlig says, board members still agreed to terminate the contract.

Under the contract, SPSA said it would provide RePower with 350,000 tons of waste annually for 15 years. SPSA calculated the cost of the contract at $56.52 per ton, cutting their municipal tipping fees by half (tipping fees are currently $125 per ton). 

Currently, SPSA is contracted with Wheelabrator Technologies, Portsmouth, New Hampshire, to handle its waste. The contract will expire in January, but Wheelabrator will stay on under a new contract where it will only accept waste from private waste haulers.

The rest of the waste, the report says, may be disposed of in the landfill ownd by SPSA in Suffolk. Suffolk City Council recently approved a seventh cell for the landfill that will extend the life of the landfill by decades. SPSA board members say landfill tipping fees are about equal to the tipping fees in the RePower proposal, around $57.53 per ton.