2014 Victories in Review

2014 Victories in Review

In our most excit­ing year yet, grass­roots cam­paigns that we’ve start­ed or sup­port­ed have won 16 vic­to­ries, most­ly against bio­mass and waste incin­er­a­tors, though some were pro-active poli­cies or oth­er facil­i­ties (land­fills or gas-fired pow­er plants). This brings the total num­ber of incin­er­a­tor vic­to­ries in our net­work to about 50 just since 2010.

Over the sum­mer, we men­tioned eight cam­paigns we expect­ed to see vic­to­ries on. Two are already in our vic­to­ry list below. Anoth­er four (in MD, PA, IN and TX) are look­ing like we’ll see vic­to­ries on them in the year to come. One, in Chester, PA, was a dif­fi­cult loss, despite some pow­er­ful orga­niz­ing work we put in. We’ll be dig­ging in to sup­port a num­ber of ongo­ing and new com­mu­ni­ty bat­tles in the com­ing year as well.

Please sup­port our abil­i­ty to help more com­mu­ni­ties win in 2015! We’d par­tic­u­lar­ly like to help ensure more vic­to­ries against gas-fired pow­er plants in the next year, as well as more incin­er­a­tor vic­to­ries and steps toward imple­ment­ing zero waste alternatives.

We’re proud to have con­tributed in small or huge ways to each of these great wins in 2014:

• Fred­er­ick, Mary­land: After a decade-long fight, local groups we sup­port­ed, No Incin­er­a­tor Alliance and Waste Not! Car­roll stopped a planned 1,500 ton/day incin­er­a­tor to burn trash, tires and sewage sludge.
• Bloom­ing­ton-Nor­mal, Illi­nois: orga­nized local res­i­dents to quick­ly stop plans by Par­a­digm BioAvi­a­tion for an exper­i­men­tal trash and tires gasi­fi­ca­tion facil­i­ty that aimed to incin­er­ate the waste, and even­tu­al­ly try to con­vert it into jet fuel. We’ve learned that they plan to try again in the state, and in McAllen, TX and we’re warn­ing res­i­dents to make sure they’re stopped for good.
• Wash­ing­ton, DC: Got a large (389 liv­ing unit) coop­er­a­tive com­plex in the nation’s capi­tol, Tiber Island Com­mu­ni­ty Homes, to be the first to add a “no incin­er­a­tion” clause to their waste con­tract, paving the way for oth­er apart­ments and coops to take con­trol of where their waste goes when it’s hauled “away.” Some of their waste has been going to the large trash incin­er­a­tor in Lor­ton, VA, pro­filed in this arti­cle on DC’s Waste and Envi­ron­men­tal Racism.
• Allen­town, Penn­syl­va­nia: stopped plans for an exper­i­men­tal trash and sewage sludge incin­er­a­tor planned in the heart of the His­pan­ic com­mu­ni­ty in the state’s 3rd largest city. We formed the Allen­town Res­i­dents for Clean Air group and this was a pri­or­i­ty fight for us since 2012, which con­tin­ues in its efforts to pre­serve the rights of all Penn­syl­va­nia local gov­ern­ments to adopt their own clean air laws.
• Stafford Coun­ty / Fred­er­icks­burg, Vir­ginia: plans for a trash and tire pyrol­y­sis incin­er­a­tor were shelved after a year of local oppo­si­tion that we supported.
• 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. 
• 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! 
• 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 
• Jasper, Indi­ana: bio­mass incin­er­a­tor to burn Mis­cant­hus grass stopped by our bio­mass net­work mem­bers, Healthy Dubois Coun­ty after a pro­tract­ed and expen­sive fight.
• 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
• 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.
• 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
• 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 Spring­field, Ver­mont: large bio­mass incin­er­a­tor stopped by North Spring­field Action Group, a grass­roots group we helped launch an oppo­si­tion campaign.
• Min­neapo­lis, Min­neso­ta: Trash incin­er­a­tor expan­sion blocked by grass­roots activists we’ve supported.
• 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.