Since 1980 the Puertorrican government has tried to instate an incinerator twice, but the project was halted by groups of citizens who fought against it. Energy Answers has now applied to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Rural Utilities Service hoping to win government financing to construct a municipal waste incinerator in Arecibo. Though it’s billed as a “waste-to-energy” facility, the project is little more than an incinerator. It would burn 2,100 tons of solid waste every day, sending plumes of toxic ash and pollutants, including lead and dioxins, into an area that is already plagued by noxious air. Even without a new incinerator, the region’s pollution already violates the Clean Air Act’s lead standard. Arecibo is the site of many polluting industrial activities, including a battery recycling operation, which resulted in Arecibo being declared a non-attainment zone by the U.S. EPA for exceeding limits on lead pollution in the air. Their operation will take 2.1 million gallons per day from Reserva Natural Caño Tiburones and will pollute Puerto Rico's most developed agricultural region with ashes. Energy Answers claims to be fully equipped with filters to control air pollutants but there have been studies that show that this chimneys will leak nano toxins called dioxins which are linked to many deformations, cancer and even genetic mutation. Also this dioxins will eventually land on grass eaten by the cattle in the area and poison even a broader spectrum of people. When Energy Answers prepared its environmental impact statement, it failed to consider the project’s effect on species living outside of the immediate construction site of the project. But the incinerator’s toxic air emissions would travel far beyond the immediate footprint of the incinerator and pose a risk to wildlife in the region’s state forests and conservation areas.