Sinking SPSA facility in Portsmouth to get repairs

CHESAPEAKE

SPSA will spend an estimated $100,000 to fix its trash-burning power plant in Portsmouth, parts of which are sinking into the ground.

"It's something SPSA's got to take care of now," Richard Cheliras, plant manager for the Southeastern Public Service Authority, told officials at a board meeting Wednesday in Chesapeake.

SPSA, which handles most garbage and recycling in South Hampton Roads, including the burning of thousands of tons of local trash at the Portsmouth plant, will ask companies to bid on the repair project next week.

A preferred remedy, Cheliras said, involves jacking up sections of the power plant and installing new support structures under the foundation.

Cracks have been widening in some walls since this spring, Cheliras said, and cooling pipes are threatened by the settling, which a consultant has blamed mostly on soft soils.

Construction activity at the neighboring Norfolk Naval Shipyard also might be contributing to the problem, the consultant suggested, noting that the Navy is pumping as much as 2,000 gallons of groundwater per minute from a waterfront site where a $23 million dry dock is being expanded.

The subsidence problem comes as SPSA is trying to sell the plant to a private buyer.

SPSA's executive director, Bucky Taylor, said he expects to make a decision on a potential sale by next year.

Members of the group Citizen Alliance to Prevent Imported Trash, or CAPIT, voiced concerns Wednesday over a possible sale, saying they fear that a private owner would haul out-of-state waste to Portsmouth for incineration - just as SPSA has stopped such shipments.

Scott Harper, (757) 446-2340, scott.harper@pilotonline.com