
Opinion Bob Englehart's Cartoons


This is kind of like watching a baseball player his whole career, from minor leagues to the majors and into retirement. Here's what I mean. I've seen the Connecticut Resources Recovery Authority go from idea on paper to fruition to what? Retirement? Out of business? I like the whole idea of re-purposing and recycling, although I'll be the first to admit it's a pain in the neck. I did cartoons about it when it first came about. I was happy enough with the old way of throwing cans and bottles in the garbage. I didn't think about what happened to it after that.

Garbage disposal is an issue in a small state like Connecticut. If this were Texas, you could dump trash anywhere and nobody would notice. The regulatory climate down there favors trash of all kinds, but in most states, including Connecticut, it's not like that. The idea of disposing of garbage in a constructive, useful manner appealed to me back in the 1970s when it was first proposed just as it does now. What we can't recycle, we burn to boil water to make steam to turn a turbine to generate electricity. The whole system makes sense.

Apparently, the idea was better on paper than in practice. Nobody counted on depressed wholesale energy prices so low that CRRA is losing money, not to mention a lawsuit involving insiders and politicians, the usual Connecticut high-level political nonsense. Now, the experts are saying that the CRRA will have to close the trash to energy plant in Hartford by the end of 2014. I hope they can save it. We're making more garbage than ever. The FBI paperwork alone could generate enough electricity to run a small prison. 

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