The preferred supplier of a gasification plant for the Dufferin Eco Energy Park (DEEP) is supplying the same technology to St. Lucia, Florida, to replace the need for a landfill site to service the city's 235,000 residents.

And a major stock brokerage is touting Alter NRG's shares as a good investment at their current listed value of about $3.15. NRG is seeking investment support to finance the Dufferin and other, larger, developments.

The technology, Westinghouse Plasma, is generally considered relatively new but is apparently anything but.

According to a recent shareholder news release, the technology was developed by NASA to test the effectiveness of heat shields for space shuttles in the 1960s and then was adapted for a waste-toenergy application.

As described by the company, the technology is seemingly simple. A plasma torch, or arc, is "mounted at the bottom of a vertical cylindrical furnace."

The ultra-high temperature converts the waste to "syngas" which is used to create electricity, up to 2 megawatts in the proposed Dufferin plant. There's a molten slag that falls out the bottom. That slag, when mixed with water, crumbles into a sand-like by-product that can be used in place of aggregates.

According to the memorandum of understanding between Alter NRG and Dufferin, the plant would have a capacity of 75 tonnes per day.

It is the capacity that raised Amaranth eyebrows at a recent county council meeting when Mayor Don MacIver questioned where the garbage would come from.

Although township councillors are not saying so, their opposition might be twofold: first, the township still has unused capacity at its dump; and secondly, a local company has approval for a small composter on the township's Third Line (County Road 11) close to the transfer station.

The company, Jemev, has a vision of using shipping containers within buildings to process local municipal waste.

Jemev president Scott Bryk says his plan would be to provide municipalities with their own processors so as to avoid transporting garbage to a large disposal site.

"You don't haul sewage to one large plant. Every town has its own treatment plant." Why would the same towns not have their own waste disposal sites, he asks.

The problem for Mr. Bryk in Dufferin is that county council is not convinced his technology is adequately proven.