VICTORY: NYC Trash Train Plan Derailed in Chester, PA

We’ve been sup­port­ing the Chester Envi­ron­men­tal Jus­tice group to “derail” plans to send 500,000 tons/year of trash from the rich­est part of New York City by train to be burned in the low-income, 75% black City of Chester, near Philadel­phia, PA. The plan would ful­fill a con­tract Cov­an­ta has with New York City to burn this waste for the next 20–30 years. That con­tract would send an equal amount to Cov­an­ta’s Nia­gara Falls, NY incin­er­a­tor, where peo­ple are fight­ing the trash-by-trail plan as well (see http://stopburningthefalls.com/myths/). Chester hosts the nation’s largest trash incin­er­a­tor, burn­ing up to 3,510 tons/day, and res­i­dents have had enough.

We just won a vote of the Chester City Plan­ning Com­mis­sion on July 11th, 2014, when we got them to vote “NO” on Cov­an­ta’s pro­pos­al for a rail box build­ing to store the rail cars of trash. It’ll go to City Coun­cil next, and we’ll be crank­ing up the pres­sure to get them to fol­low the Plan­ning Com­mis­sion’s advice.

With about 100 peo­ple turned out, stand­ing-room-only, we packed the place and made a strong impact. We also had 100 peo­ple email the local offi­cials lead­ing up to the meeting.

We demand­ed that the Chester Plan­ning Com­mis­sion rec­om­mend that City Coun­cil vote “NO” on Cov­an­ta’s NYC trash-by-train pro­pos­al. See www.ejnet.org/chester/ for back­ground info and a copy of our pre­sen­ta­tion.

The sec­ond best part was the silence when the Plan­ning Com­mis­sion chair asked for a sec­ond on the pro­pos­al to ask Cov­an­ta to expand their capac­i­ty and add pol­lu­tion con­trols (how about just the pol­lu­tion controls??).

The BEST part was when the chair then moved that they rec­om­mend a “NO” vote and asked “all in favor, say aye” …and the entire room respond­ed in cho­rus with “AYE.” Beau­ti­ful and empowering.

Here’s the news cov­er­age of it:

Chester plan­ners give thumbs down to Cov­an­ta land devel­op­ment plan

By Vince Sul­li­van, Delaware Coun­ty Dai­ly Times

Post­ed: 07/09/14, 11:38 PM EDT

CHESTER — The city plan­ning com­mis­sion vot­ed Wednes­day night not to rec­om­mend for approval an appli­ca­tion from a trash incin­er­at­ing com­pa­ny to con­struct a new build­ing on its prop­er­ty. The city’s plan­ning depart­ment approved the appli­ca­tion, but after hear­ing tes­ti­mo­ny from a num­ber of res­i­dents, as well the facility’s oper­a­tor, the com­mis­sion declined to endorse the project by a 5–0 vote.

Covanta’s Delaware Val­ley Resource Recov­ery facil­i­ty, the largest ener­gy-from-waste incin­er­a­tor in the coun­try, is locat­ed in the unit block of High­land Avenue and burns munic­i­pal sol­id waste in order to gen­er­ate elec­tric­i­ty, han­dling about 1.2 mil­lion tons of garbage per year. It gen­er­ates 80 megawatts of elec­tric­i­ty at peak per­for­mance. The com­pa­ny recent­ly entered into a 20-year con­tract to bring waste from New York City via train to Wilm­ing­ton, Del., where it will then be placed on trucks and dri­ven to the Chester facility.

Cov­an­ta pro­posed con­struct­ing a 1,000-square-foot office build­ing and 15,000-square-foot rail box trans­fer build­ing to han­dle the new mode of deliv­ery. Cur­rent­ly, all of Covanta’s waste is brought in on trans­fer trail­ers, but the pro­pos­al would enable trucks car­ry­ing the rail box­es to deliv­er some of the waste. The con­tract with New York City is to incin­er­ate 1 mil­lion tons of garbage per year, but would not increase the per­mit­ted capac­i­ty of the facil­i­ty, and truck traf­fic would not increase, accord­ing to Cov­an­ta Vice Pres­i­dent John Waf­fen­schmidt. He said that about 400,000 tons from New York would be brought to the Chester facil­i­ty, and the rest would go to oth­er Cov­an­ta locations.

“We receive all of our waste by truck,” Waf­fen­schmidt said in response to some of the 100 peo­ple in atten­dance at the meet­ing ques­tion­ing the appli­ca­tion. “The request we have is to have some of that by rail. There is no request at all to increase the amount of waste.”

At least a dozen res­i­dents voiced their oppo­si­tion to the land devel­op­ment request, with most say­ing that they have suf­fered health prob­lems due to the facility’s emis­sions since it began oper­a­tion in the ear­ly 1990s. Claims of asth­ma and birth defects were made and com­plaints about foul smells ema­nat­ing from the facil­i­ty were voiced.

Waf­fen­schmidt said the emis­sions from the plant are reg­u­lat­ed by the Penn­syl­va­nia Depart­ment of Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and the fed­er­al Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency, and that Cov­an­ta com­plies with those regulations.

“There has been no request to change those lim­its,” he said.

Plan­ning com­mis­sion Chair­man Antho­ny L. Moore said that since the pro­pos­al was first heard at a June meet­ing, he and oth­er com­mis­sion mem­bers have been inun­dat­ed with cor­re­spon­dence from res­i­dents and envi­ron­men­tal advocates.

“We’ve had pub­lic com­ment at our meet­ing last month,” Moore said. “We’ve gone to Cov­an­ta and asked some of the public’s ques­tions. We’ve also met with an envi­ron­men­tal group. We’ve heard your con­cerns. We’ve got­ten 50 to 100 emails. Please know that all of the envi­ron­men­tal con­cerns have been tak­en into account.”

Mike Ewall, of the Ener­gy Jus­tice Net­work, gave a con­densed ver­sion of the hour­long pre­sen­ta­tion he made to the com­mis­sion on Tues­day, say­ing that asth­ma rates in Chester were three times high­er among chil­dren than in the rest of the state. He added that Cov­an­ta could be burn­ing more trash than they are now.

“They are not burn­ing at full capac­i­ty,” Ewall said, cit­ing EPA reports. “They have extra space to burn more.”

He explained that the facil­i­ty is only oper­at­ing at 75 per­cent of its per­mit­ted capacity.

A cho­rus of res­i­dents in atten­dance said that they not only want­ed the appli­ca­tion denied, but that they want­ed the com­mis­sion to close the incin­er­a­tor for good.

“The plan­ning com­mis­sion has no author­i­ty to make a com­pa­ny pick up and move out of the city,” Moore said.

“We only make rec­om­men­da­tions based on land devel­op­ment and usage issues,” said Com­mis­sion­er Annette Pyatt.

A motion, request­ed by Pyatt and made by Moore in her absence when she had to leave the meet­ing ear­ly, sought a per­mit appli­ca­tion for increased capac­i­ty from Cov­an­ta, as well as the instal­la­tion of addi­tion­al pol­lu­tion con­trol devices. The motion died for lack of a second.

A motion to rec­om­mend not approv­ing the appli­ca­tion was suc­cess­ful, with many audi­ence mem­bers shout­ing “aye” when it came time for the com­mis­sion­ers to vote.

Waf­fen­schmidt was per­plexed by the denial, say­ing that he thought the plan­ning com­mis­sion was sup­posed to exam­ine the application’s con­for­mi­ty with exist­ing land plan­ning regulations.

“There was no fac­tu­al expla­na­tion as to why it was denied,” he said. “We specif­i­cal­ly asked for some­thing that meets the code. We don’t know that the vote was based on its mer­its or whether it was swayed by the res­i­dents and their comments.”

Moore said the com­mis­sion would pre­pare a res­o­lu­tion to be con­sid­ered by city coun­cil, which would have the final say in approv­ing or deny­ing the application.