Truth, as Churchill observed, is the first casualty in war. In paraphrase, one could say that nuances are the first casualties in the public debate over socio-economic issues.

One nuance seemingly squashed in the evolving debate over the Broga incinerator is that the authorities can continue to dispose of waste by the landfill method when that has become manifestly untenable.

Land is becoming scarce and the spiraling amounts of waste a rapidly modernising society generates Kuala Lumpur alone spews up 2,350 tonnes a day and mounting would make unbridled dumping in a gigantic crater a menace to underground water resources. Furthermore, methane is produced from the waste.

The crux of many public policy issues that involve use of developing technologies revolves around the question of how much you want to give up of No Longer Such a Good Thing 'A' (landfill) to realise how much of Better Thing 'B' (thermal treatment of solid waste).

This way of looking broadly at issues quickly recognises that in public policy, there are very few completely self-contained situations.

'Best option'

Once it is acknowledged that incineration or thermal treatment of waste is inevitable, the next question would be what type of incineration technology is to be used: the stoker type or what is proposed for Broga the gasification and ash melting type.

Several advantages arise from using the latter technology, the principal one being that it generates a low level of dioxin emission, minuscule amounts that do not constitute a threat.

Dioxins are carcinogenic substances that are generated when materials are burnt. A forest on fire or a smoldering barbeque pit generates dioxins. A high level of dioxin emission results when plastics are burnt. Like the lead in the burning of fossils fuels, dioxins are an inevitable industrial concomitant. At environmentally permissible levels, they are no threat.

The other advantages of the technology to be used by the Broga incinerator are the high rate of metal recovery that can be achieved and the greater efficacy in the conversion of the thermal energy used for power generation.

Germany, Japan, US, Sweden and Singapore have plumped for the thermal treatment of waste, while continuing with a progressively lower percentage of waste management through the landfill method, with a steady portions reserved for recycling and compost.

Metropolitan Tokyo alone has 21 incinerators, out of national total of 1,717. Many of these incinerators in Japan are located within the vicinity of residential wards (see picture). The nearest human habitation to the Broga incinerator would be at least 500m away.

The move from the landfill method to thermal treatment of metropolitan Kuala Lumpur's waste is an idea whose time has come.

For environmental and other prudential reasons, the gasification and ash melting technology that the Broga incinerator will employ is the best option in the solution of Kuala Lumpur's looming waste disposal woes.

J TERENCE NETTO is a journalist of nearly 30 years' experience consisting of spells spent in the mainstream papers interspersed with bouts of freelancing. All that time he found that the main attraction in journalism is that it puts you in contact with the eminent without being under the necessity to admire them.