Incinerator Victory in Muncy, Pennsylvania!

Just in time for the hol­i­days, res­i­dents of the rur­al town of Muncy, PA just had their local bor­ough coun­cil pass into law a set-back dis­tance ordi­nance we wrote. It pro­hibits any new facil­i­ties requir­ing a state air pol­lu­tion or waste per­mit from locat­ing with­in 900 feet of an occu­pied dwelling, school, park, or playground.

This effec­tive­ly blocks Delta Ther­mo Ener­gy, a com­pa­ny we’ve been fight­ing for sev­er­al years, hav­ing stopped them in 2014 from locat­ing in the City of Allen­town, PA. They planned to take 100–200 tons per day of trash and sewage sludge, turn it into “fuel pel­lets” through a “hydrother­mal decom­po­si­tion” process, then incin­er­ate these waste pel­lets on-site. Of course, their mag­i­cal process exploits an EPA loop­hole, allow­ing this waste not to be con­sid­ered a waste any­more, so they can be reg­u­lat­ed less strict­ly — as a boil­er or pow­er plant, not as an incinerator.

They came to Muncy, PA in the sum­mer of 2016, propos­ing the same, but after fac­ing resis­tance, the pro­pos­al soon became one to just make the pel­lets, and mar­ket them to be burned in coal pow­er plants in Penn­syl­va­nia, Ohio, and West Vir­ginia. EPA’s Clean Pow­er Plan, and their Non-Haz­ardous Sec­ondary Mate­ri­als (“waste = fuel”) rule incen­tivize this. While the Clean Pow­er Plan is dead for now, the oth­er incen­tives may con­tin­ue, and could encour­age coal plants to stay open longer than they oth­er­wise would, and become dirt­i­er by start­ing to burn waste with­out addi­tion­al pol­lu­tion controls.

Delta Ther­mo Ener­gy has been unusu­al­ly tena­cious. Most com­pa­nies give up after one or a few times being reject­ed. We expect to have to beat them again soon, as rumor has it that they may be look­ing at more sites near Muncy. They brag about hav­ing 22 local gov­ern­ments inter­est­ed between Penn­syl­va­nia and New Jer­sey, and we know of sev­er­al that have already reject­ed them. Keep an eye out, and be in touch with us if they (or any oth­er pol­luters) are com­ing your way!

Don’t try this at home… with­out our help.

We’d love to work with oth­er com­mu­ni­ties to get pro­tec­tive local ordi­nances passed to stop pro­posed or poten­tial pol­luters, or to even set stricter require­ments for exist­ing facil­i­ties where pos­si­ble. Please be in touch if you’d like to work togeth­er on this approach in your com­mu­ni­ty. Do not sim­ply copy ordi­nances we’ve had passed else­where. While most of the Muncy ordi­nance is as we pro­posed, some good things were removed or kept out, and it could have been stronger in some regards. Every com­mu­ni­ty is dif­fer­ent, so feel free to check out the resources we have on stop­ping pol­luters with local ordi­nances, but con­tact us to help devel­op a strat­e­gy that makes sense for your sit­u­a­tion. Thanks!