2014 a Banner Year for Victories

This is the year for vic­to­ries against bio­mass and waste incin­er­a­tors. We’ve tracked 45 vic­to­ries by those in our net­work since 2010, but this year is some­thing spe­cial. It’s only been sev­en months and we’ve already seen sev­en vic­to­ries, plus a vic­to­ry against a pro­posed gas-fired pow­er plant and two state-lev­el pol­i­cy vic­to­ries. We’re proud to have con­tributed in small (and some­times not so small) ways to the great grass­roots work that result­ed in each. So far this year:

• White Deer, Penn­syl­va­nia: Pro­posed tire incin­er­a­tor stopped by grass­roots lead­ers with Orga­ni­za­tions Unit­ed for the Envi­ron­ment and the Tire Burn­er Team who we’ve sup­port­ed since 2011.
• Min­neapo­lis, Min­neso­ta: Trash incin­er­a­tor expan­sion blocked by grass­roots activists we’ve supported.
• North Spring­field, Ver­mont: large bio­mass incin­er­a­tor stopped by North Spring­field Action Group, a grass­roots group we helped launch an oppo­si­tion campaign.
• Bris­tol Town­ship, Penn­syl­va­nia: Pro­posed haz­ardous waste incin­er­a­tor stopped after we’ve tes­ti­fied to expose cor­po­rate mis­in­for­ma­tion, and sup­port­ed grass­roots and polit­i­cal oppo­nents who reached out to us in late 2013.
• North Las Vegas, Neva­da: gigan­tic plan for a con­struc­tion and demo­li­tion gasi­fi­ca­tion incin­er­a­tor stopped by our bio­mass net­work mem­bers, Cit­i­zens of North Las Vegas Unit­ed.
• Port Townsend, Wash­ing­ton: paper mil­l’s plan for a bio­mass incin­er­a­tor stopped by our bio­mass net­work mem­bers, Port Townsend Air Watch­ers and No Bio­mass Burn.
• Jasper, Indi­ana: bio­mass incin­er­a­tor to burn Mis­cant­hus grass stopped by our bio­mass net­work mem­bers, Healthy Dubois Coun­ty.
• Newark, Delaware: a nat­ur­al gas pow­er plant (dis­guised as a data cen­ter at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Delaware) was stopped by the Newark Res­i­dents Against the Pow­er Plant group we helped train.
• Lor­ton, Vir­ginia: a construction/demolition waste land­fill expan­sion was defeat­ed by the Cit­i­zens to Stop the Dump and South Coun­ty Fed­er­a­tion. We helped a bit, going door-to-door in the com­mu­ni­ty that is also over­shad­owed by the 4th largest trash incin­er­a­tor and sur­round­ed by two oth­er land­fills. We brought in experts on zero waste to speak about alter­na­tives for recy­cling those valu­able materials.
• Mary­land: Work­ing with the Zero Waste Mary­land coali­tion and oth­er allies, we helped stop leg­is­la­tion, for a sec­ond year in a row, that would have put Mary­land on the path to burn­ing near­ly all of its waste that is not recy­cled. Also, com­ment­ed on sev­er­al oth­er com­pro­mised ener­gy bills, none of which passed.
• Wash­ing­ton, DC: Wash­ing­ton, DC city gov­ern­ment passed two major waste laws we worked on, ban­ning Sty­ro­foam, insti­tut­ing curb­side com­post­ing, requir­ing the city to adopt a zero waste plan, start­ing elec­tron­ic waste recy­cling and much more to move the nation’s capi­tol toward zero waste!

Lat­er this year, we hope and expect to see vic­to­ries in oth­er com­mu­ni­ties we’ve been sup­port­ing, includ­ing against incin­er­a­tors planned in Allen­town, PA, Areci­bo, Puer­to Rico, Bal­ti­more, MD, Craw­ford Coun­ty, PA, Fred­er­ick, MD, and Logans­port, IN. We also are hope­ful to see vic­to­ries against a New York City trash-by-train plan to feed the nation’s largest incin­er­a­tor, in Chester, PA, and a pro­posed land­fill in Waller Coun­ty, TX.