Plant Converting Green Country Trash To Energy Celebrates 30 Years

The plant that turns Tulsa's trash into energy marked 30 years of operation Tuesday.

Covanta Tulsa is the destination for all of the residential trash picked up in Tulsa and Broken Arrow. It's burned and generates steam used by Holly Refinery.

The technology is more common now, but when the plant opened it was cutting edge.

Covanta CEO, Stephen Jones, said, "I deal with a lot of municipalities and having them get over the hump of getting away from landfills to energy from waste technology, it takes a lot of time. And, so, to have them have done that 30 years ago, is pretty darn impressive."

Covanta has 50 employees in Tulsa and handles 1,100 tons of residential trash every day.