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When a developer abruptly dropped plans for a waste-incineration plant in North Las Vegas, a few hundred residents fighting the plans saw victory – the end of a contentious, if short-lived, proposal.

But for organizer Christie Linert it was only the beginning. The city’s handling of the proposal left her concerned that her community, or others across the county, could be blindsided by similar projects in the future. Indeed, North Las Vegas is far from the first to be caught off-guard by high-tech incinerator proposals in recent years.

Short on landfill space and keen to find novel ways of generating electricity, cities nationwide have begun considering a new wave of incinerator plants designed to be cleaner and more efficient then their predecessors. Yet the technologies remain largely unproven, and many cities have been unable to navigate both public opinion and the complex issues surrounding their potential emissions and energy production.

No definitive data

Due to a lack of definitive data, cities faced with proposals to build plants using these new technologies often take developers’ claims at face value, said Monica Wilson of the Global Anti-Incinerator Alliance. Still, none of the more than 100 such proposals to surface nationwide in the last seven years has succeeded.

In North Las Vegas, Florida-based EnviroPower Renewable proposed building an incinerator that could generate up to 48 megawatts by burning 1,000 tons of tires and construction waste per day in an industrial area adjacent to a planned school and existing residential neighborhood.