Covanta’s trash incinerator, the largest air polluter in Camden County, NJ

Background

Cov­an­ta’s trash incin­er­a­tor in the City of Cam­den, New Jer­sey is the largest air pol­luter in the city, and in all of Cam­den Coun­ty, respon­si­ble for half of the indus­tri­al air pol­lu­tion in the coun­ty. See the fact­sheet on Cov­an­ta Cam­den’s emis­sions for details, based on the lat­est data from U.S. Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency.

Cov­an­ta’s trash incin­er­a­tor is the sec­ond worst in the nation for tox­ic lead emis­sions, and nev­er had the mod­ern air pol­lu­tion con­trols for par­tic­u­late mat­ter (called a “bag­house”). Cov­an­ta has pitched the micro­grid scheme as being nec­es­sary for them to have the mon­ey to install the long-miss­ing bag­house fil­ter sys­tem. They have also stat­ed that this is a cor­po­rate pri­or­i­ty for them and that they would install it regard­less of whether they got the micro­grid deal. We’re still wait­ing for them to even file an appli­ca­tion with the state to actu­al­ly do this. After get­ting a per­mit, it would take three years to install — one year for each of their three boil­ers. As of March 2024, Cov­an­ta’s incin­er­a­tor is 33 years old. Most incin­er­a­tors don’t make it to their 40th birth­day, and the aver­age age of the 51 incin­er­a­tors that closed between 2000 and 2024 was just 24 years. It’s unlike­ly that Cov­an­ta (or their new own­er, EQT) will real­ly choose to invest in new equip­ment at a plant that could close before these con­trols have even been in ser­vice for long.

A study by a pro­fes­sor of envi­ron­men­tal med­i­cine at New York Uni­ver­si­ty has found that just one pol­lu­tant released from the Bal­ti­more trash incin­er­a­tor caus­es an esti­mat­ed $55 mil­lion in annu­al harm to human health across sev­er­al states (includ­ing New Jer­sey), most­ly attrib­ut­able to lives cut short. This pol­lu­tant is fine par­tic­u­late mat­ter, also known as “PM2.5” (par­tic­u­late mat­ter small­er than 2.5 microns). An April 2020 Har­vard study found that very small increas­es in this PM2.5 pol­lu­tion in the air are enough to cause a 15% increase in death from COVID-19. We also know that in New Jer­sey, as in Mary­land, black res­i­dents are dying from COVID-19 at the high­est rates. In NJ, it’s near­ly dou­ble the rate of white residents.

While the Cam­den incin­er­a­tor is less than half the size of Bal­ti­more’s, the Cam­den incin­er­a­tor has high­er emis­sions of fine par­tic­u­late mat­ter (PM2.5): 46,174 lbs of PM2.5 in Bal­ti­more when the study was done… com­pared to 51,320 lbs of those emis­sions in Cam­den in 2017. That, com­bined with the high­er pop­u­la­tion in the Philadel­phia area means that we can expect Cov­an­ta Cam­den is caus­ing MORE than $55 mil­lion in annu­al health dam­age just from that one pollutant.

You can find a lot more info at our web­page on trash incin­er­a­tion, includ­ing info on incin­er­a­tion and human health, and how incin­er­a­tion com­pares to land­fills.

Pollution and Health

• Cam­den is the 3rd worst in the nation for indus­tri­al air pol­lu­tion near pub­lic schools.
• The Cov­an­ta Cam­den trash incin­er­a­tor is the largest indus­tri­al air pol­luter in Cam­den Coun­ty, by far, accord­ing to the U.S. Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency, account­ing for half of the coun­ty’s indus­tri­al air pol­lu­tion, includ­ing 81% of the nitro­gen oxide (NOx) pol­lu­tion and 89% of the lead pollution.
• Trash incin­er­a­tion is the most pol­lut­ing way to man­age waste or to make ener­gy.

Asth­ma

• Asth­ma is a lead­ing cause of school absen­teeism.
• Asth­ma costs our nation $82 bil­lion a year, includ­ing $3 bil­lion in missed school and work days, accord­ing to the Asth­ma and Aller­gy Foun­da­tion of Amer­i­ca’s Asth­ma Cap­i­tals 2021 report, which also names our met­ro­pol­i­tan area as the nation’s 7th worst asth­ma cap­i­tal (down from 4th in 2019).
• One in three Cam­den stu­dents is diag­nosed with asth­ma, near­ly four times the state average.
• Cam­den res­i­dents are four times more like­ly than New Jer­sey res­i­dents as a whole to vis­it an emer­gency depart­ment or be hos­pi­tal­ized for asthma.
• Air pol­lut­ed by nitro­gen oxides (NOx) is well known for trig­ger­ing asth­ma attacks.

Tox­ic Lead, Learn­ing & Behavior

• Tox­ic lead pol­lu­tion reduces a child’s abil­i­ty to learn and con­tributes to anti-social behavior.
• Cov­an­ta Cam­den is the sec­ond largest air emit­ter of tox­ic lead in the entire trash incin­er­a­tion indus­try in the U.S.
• There is no safe dose of lead.
• The brain dam­age caused by lead expo­sure is per­ma­nent and irreversible.

Covanta’s Violations

Cov­an­ta has a long his­to­ry of law-break­ing, as evi­denced by this 93-page com­pi­la­tion of their vio­la­tions through 2006. Cov­an­ta did­n’t take over run­ning the Cam­den trash incin­er­a­tor until 2013, so their vio­la­tions aren’t report­ed until this more recent com­pli­ance his­to­ry through June 2018. See page 6 for vio­la­tions at the Cam­den plant.

Environmental racism

Cam­den has a long his­to­ry of activism against envi­ron­men­tal racism, and was part of a major envi­ron­men­tal jus­tice legal case in the 1990s. Learn more about envi­ron­men­tal jus­tice and envi­ron­men­tal racism. Trash incin­er­a­tors are an envi­ron­men­tal racism issue, as the largest incin­er­a­tors dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly impact Black peo­ple the most. Around Cov­an­ta Cam­den, specif­i­cal­ly, you can find the demo­graph­ic data at var­i­ous dis­tances avail­able in the EJ analy­sis at the top of the Cov­an­ta Cam­den page in our map­ping project.

Covanta’s Propaganda

Cov­an­ta has much to say about how healthy and safe they are, despite clear evi­dence that they’re a major air pol­luter. They have “white papers” on health and emis­sions. See our respons­es to these PR pieces on health stud­ies and their air emis­sions claims.

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Victory Announcement & Next Steps

Press Release 8/3/2021:

Cam­den for Clean Air Announces Next Steps Fol­low­ing Vic­to­ry Over Incin­er­a­tor-Pow­ered Micro­grid Scheme

Cam­den for Clean Air won its first major demand: to stop a pro­posed micro­grid in Cam­den City, NJ from being pow­ered by the county’s largest air pol­luter, the Cov­an­ta trash incin­er­a­tor. It was announced on March 5, 2021 that this pro­posed micro­grid would instead be pow­ered by solar, digester gas, and bat­tery stor­age. The group will now pro­ceed with its effort to close the incin­er­a­tor for good.

Cam­den for Clean Air was formed in May 2020 upon learn­ing that the pro­posed micro­grid was being used as a life exten­sion strat­e­gy for Covanta’s trash incin­er­a­tor. If allowed to pro­ceed, it would have enabled Cov­an­ta trash incin­er­a­tor to rough­ly triple their elec­tric­i­ty sales rev­enue. Project pro­po­nents admit­ted in writ­ing that the micro­grid would “pre­serve and extend the plant’s use­ful life,” even while deny­ing this in pub­lic meetings.

This vic­to­ry was the result of relent­less pres­sure and advo­ca­cy from our group and oth­ers applied for near­ly a year on city, coun­ty, and state lev­el officials.

Despite this pos­i­tive devel­op­ment and top ask of our group being grant­ed, many unre­solved issues remain with both the pro­posed micro­grid and with envi­ron­men­tal jus­tice issues at-large in the City and Coun­ty of Camden.

Some of these ques­tions include:

1. Will the Cov­an­ta trash incinerator’s exclu­sion from the pro­posed micro­grid plan be for­mal­ized in writ­ing, or via city or coun­ty ordi­nance or contract?
2. Will the Cov­an­ta trash incin­er­a­tor still be installing their miss­ing bag­house fil­tra­tion sys­tem and, if not, will Assem­bly­man Moen and Spear­man move for­ward with their leg­is­la­tion requir­ing this?
3. Will the Cam­den Coun­ty Munic­i­pal Util­i­ties Author­i­ty (CCMUA) still be build­ing a pipeline of sewage efflu­ent to the Cov­an­ta trash incin­er­a­tor for them to use as cool­ing water, pos­si­bly extend­ing the incinerator’s exis­tence in the city?
4. Will the ten small gas-fired pow­er plants pro­posed in the Phase II micro­grid plan still be installed around the city as relat­ed “nanogrid” operations?
5. Will Holtec, East­ern Met­al Recy­cling (EMR), Geor­gia Pacif­ic Gyp­sum, and oth­er pol­lut­ing, large­ly prop­er­ty tax-exempt com­pa­nies still be micro­grid cus­tomers, or will this micro­grid main­ly serve pub­lic pur­pos­es as ini­tial­ly promised by the plan’s orig­i­na­tor, for­mer CCMUA and Envi­ron­men­tal Jus­tice Advi­so­ry Board Mem­ber, Andrew Kricun?
6. Will the city and coun­ty reac­ti­vate their long-vacant envi­ron­men­tal com­mis­sions and empow­er them to have a real say over envi­ron­men­tal projects and envi­ron­men­tal jus­tice issues in our region?
7. Will the com­mu­ni­ty be assured that no oth­er forms of incin­er­a­tion (so-called “waste-to-ener­gy”) oth­er than anaer­o­bic diges­tion will be used to pow­er the micro­grid? [It is impor­tant to note that EMR orig­i­nal­ly pro­posed to incin­er­ate auto shred­der residue, but can­celed it for lack of util­i­ties which could be installed as part of the micro­grid project.]

Pos­si­bly the most impor­tant ques­tion for local offi­cials is will they pub­licly con­demn the exis­tence of the Cov­an­ta trash incin­er­a­tor in the city of Cam­den and com­mit to end­ing the county’s waste con­tract with the facility?

Giv­en that incin­er­a­tion is the most expen­sive and pol­lut­ing way to man­age waste, it is clear that the age of dirty ener­gy pro­duc­tion via trash incin­er­a­tion has come to a log­i­cal end in the state of New Jer­sey. The Cov­an­ta facil­i­ty in Cam­den is reach­ing end of life, it does not use state of the art pol­lu­tion fil­tra­tion or even indus­try stan­dard equip­ment such as bag­house fil­ters, and it is the #2 top emit­ter of tox­ic lead in the entire trash incin­er­a­tion indus­try in the Unit­ed States. New Jer­sey Depart­ment of Envi­ron­men­tal Protection’s Cam­den Spruce Street air qual­i­ty mon­i­tor locat­ed close to Cov­an­ta trash incin­er­a­tor rou­tine­ly scores the high­est annu­al par­tic­u­late mat­ter lev­el aver­ages in the entire state of New Jer­sey. These high lev­els of par­tic­u­late mat­ter direct­ly con­tribute to the extreme res­pi­ra­to­ry health dis­par­i­ties in the city of Camden.

Recent pol­i­cy and state gov­ern­ment reports are mak­ing it clear that trash incin­er­a­tors are being phased out in New Jer­sey such as:

• Covanta’s War­ren Coun­ty, NJ incin­er­a­tor closed in 2019.
• Cov­an­ta Cam­den rou­tine­ly delays their bag­house fil­ter installation.
• The state of NJ explic­it­ly cites their intent to phase out pow­er from waste incin­er­a­tion, coal, and land­fill gas by 2050 in their recent­ly pub­lished Glob­al Warm­ing Response Act 80 x 50 Report.

The next step is for Cam­den Coun­ty to stop con­tract­ing to burn its trash. We also will be look­ing for the state Assem­bly to end its clas­si­fi­ca­tion of trash incin­er­a­tion as a “renew­able ener­gy” source in the state’s renew­able ener­gy man­date, caus­ing ratepay­er dol­lars to flow to incin­er­a­tors instead of clean ener­gy sources like wind and solar.

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Media Coverage:

3/8/2021	Path to a Clean, Resilient Micro­grid in Cam­den, New Jersey
3/6/2021	Cam­den Coun­ty needs a back­up plan for future storms. Clean ener­gy can be the solu­tion, devel­op­er says
3/5/2021	Offi­cials Tout Resilien­cy Of Cam­den Microgrid
3/4/2021	‘Micro’­manag­ing a good thing for N.J. city’s clean ener­gy needs
3/4/2021	Invest­ing in resilien­cy for our pow­er grid with renewables
6/2/2020	Opin­ion: Cov­an­ta Does­n’t Deserve Chance to Expand in Camden
6/1/2020	Res­i­dents Invit­ed To Vir­tu­al­ly Dis­cuss Pro­posed Cam­den Micro­grid Plan
5/27/2020	Burn­ing trash to gen­er­ate elec­tric­i­ty: Los­ing com­bi­na­tion for Cam­den kids’ lungs and learn­ing (Opin­ion piece by Cam­den for Clean Air mem­ber, Ben Saracco)
5/22/2020	Micro­grid Meets Resis­tance Over Ties to Cam­den Incin­er­a­tor, Lack of Com­mu­ni­ty Engagement
5/21/2020	Opin­ion: Micro­grid Inno­va­tion Promis­es to be Part of the City’s Sus­tain­able Future (Free­hold­er Nash opin­ion piece)
5/19/2020	Opin­ion: Burn­ing Trash to Gen­er­ate Elec­tric­i­ty, a Los­ing Com­bi­na­tion for Cam­den Kids’ Lungs and Learn­ing (Opin­ion piece by Cam­den for Clean Air mem­ber, Ben Saracco)