Anchorage Mulls Waste‑to‑Energy Plant That Could Redefine the City’s Power Landscape

When you picture Anchorage’s skyline, a towering incinerator probably isn’t the first image that comes to mind. Yet municipal leaders have been quietly scouting a spot on the current landfill that could host a waste‑to‑energy (WtE) plant as early as 2032. The idea? Burn the city’s trash, capture the heat, turn it into steam, spin a turbine and, voilà, electricity for thousands of homes.

It sounds almost like a plot twist in a climate‑fiction story, but the proposal is rooted in a 2020 feasibility study that labeled the project both “practical” and “desirable.” Since then, Kelli Toth, director of Solid Waste Services, has been nudging the concept forward, noting the “momentum” building within the agency and among elected officials.

At last week’s Infrastructure, Enterprise and Utilities Oversight Committee meeting, the project team pinpointed a tentative site – right within the footprint of the Anchorage Regional Landfill. For Eagle River council member Jared Goecker, that was a relief. “I was hoping this was where we’d land at,” he said, emphasizing the need to keep the plant close to the waste it will process.

The next steps are a mix of engineering and community‑building. Designers will fine‑tune the facility’s layout, regulators will chew over permitting, financiers will draft a budget, and outreach crews will start knocking on doors in Chugiak‑Eagle River. Goecker, ever the local voice, urged the team to engage directly with neighborhood councils, reminding them that the area “is famous for being fiercely territorial.” He framed the plant as a shared benefit, not a top‑down imposition.

Money talk is still tentative. No firm cost estimate has emerged, but officials plan to deliver a financial roadmap to the Assembly by May 2027. If the numbers line up, construction could kick off in 2030 with completion slated for 2032.

Why the buzz? For one, the plant’s projected output – roughly 20‑30 megawatts – could power about 20,000 homes. Whether that electricity will be sold to Chugach Electric Association or another utility under a power‑purchase agreement is still up in the air. Beyond sheer kilowatts, the project promises a cleaner landfill. Every year Anchorage buries hundreds of thousands of tons of trash, a practice that not only hogs land but also leaks methane and other contaminants.

In a WtE model, the waste doesn’t just sit in the ground; it becomes fuel. The heat from combustion creates steam, the steam drives a turbine, and the turbine spins a generator. Any metals in the ash get reclaimed for recycling, and the remaining ash is safely buried – a far more compact solution than expanding the landfill forever.

The plant would also take on a side‑kick currently handled by the Anchorage Water and Wastewater Utility’s Asplund plant: incinerating biosolids from toilets. Those gases would be scrubbed through a robust filtration system, with emissions monitored around the clock to meet strict air‑quality standards.

Critics will undoubtedly ask about odors, traffic and the visual impact of a modern incinerator. Proponents, like Toth, counter that the environmental trade‑offs are worth it. “If you can harness that in a beneficial way, why wouldn’t you?” she asked, gesturing toward the endless stream of garbage trucks that already circle the landfill each day.

For now, Anchorage stands at a crossroads. The city can continue relying on an aging natural‑gas infrastructure that faces supply uncertainties, or it can embrace a hybrid approach that blends waste management with local power generation. The final decision will hinge on numbers, public input and, perhaps most importantly, the city’s willingness to think a little differently about what it does with its trash.