anchorage wants to burn your trash

and use it to keep the lights on.

The city is now seriously planning a waste to energy plant, a facility that burns our trash and turns the heat into electricity. The spot they're eyeing is right inside the current landfill footprint out by Eagle River, and the utility director says it could fundamentally transform how Anchorage runs its services.

The numbers are big. Twenty to thirty megawatts of power, roughly enough for twenty thousand homes, at a time when everyone's nervous about the gas supply that keeps Southcentral running.

It solves a quieter problem too. Burning the trash shrinks what goes in the ground by about ninety percent, which stretches the life of the landfill by decades instead of hunting for a new one.

The city figures it could also skip replacing an aging sewage incinerator, a move that saves an estimated seventy-five million dollars. Even the leftover ash gets picked through for metals to recycle.

Nothing is funded yet. The financial plan goes to the Assembly next May, construction could start in twenty thirty, and the switch could flip in twenty thirty-two.

Your trash bill, your power grid, and your landfill are all in one conversation now. That's a story worth following for every household in town.