BRADENTON, Fla. — St. Lucie County on Florida’s east coast this week agreed to issue debt for the country’s first plant that will vaporize solid waste through plasma arc gasification.
County commissioners on Tuesday approved a resolution and a memorandum of agreement supporting issuing bonds for the plant’s construction, which carries a price tag of about $425 million. That enabled Atlanta-based Geoplasma LLC to proceed with building plans.
St. Lucie County will be the conduit for $250 million of tax-exempt bonds and $75 million of taxable bonds for the plant. Commissioners authorized bond counsel to apply for a $250 million allocation of industrial development or private activity bonds from the state.
No bonds are expected to be issued within the next 12 months, said Robert Freeman, an attorney with Bryant Miller Olive, the county’s bond counsel. Documents approved Tuesday allow Geoplasma to begin incurring expenses that can be reimbursed later with bond proceeds.
Geoplasma is responsible for permitting, financing, constructing, operating, and owning the facility that will process 3,000 tons of municipal solid waste per day using plasma-arc gasification to create temperatures hotter than the sun to vaporize garbage and trash. A gas byproduct will be used to create electricity.
Company and county officials are close to finalizing a lease for land at the county’s existing landfill, and a contract for construction and operation of the facility. Those documents and financing arrangements are also being reviewed by Public Financial Management Inc., the county’s financial adviser.
“Geoplasma intends to make a significant equity investment in the project,” said Ben Speed, a principal with New Prospect Capital LLC in Atlanta, Geoplasma’s financial adviser. UBS Securities LLC has been chosen by Geoplasma to underwrite the bonds.
Although Speed did not say what the company’s financial share of the project is, Geoplasma assumes all risk associated with the project and the company must pay for any costs over the proceeds raised through the sale of the bonds, according to county documents.
The plant has received attention across the country because the application of plasma-arc gasification has never been used on such a large scale. In addition to vaporizing garbage and trash that comes to the site, the new disposal process will be used to reclaim the county’s existing landfill.
Geoplasma president Hilburn Hillestad told commissioners that to the best of his knowledge no landfill has been reclaimed through a process similar to gasification being developed in St. Lucie County.
“All governments want to get rid of landfills and no one has figured out how to do that safely,” Hillestad said. “This technology does offer that opportunity. This will be the first.”
Hillestad said the project would bring 80 to 100 new jobs and $5 million in annual salaries and benefits to the county.
“We’ve got a green project. It’s environmentally the right thing to do,” he said. “It’s also a significant economic contributor to the county.”
