Incinerator in Frederick, MD Canceled After Decade-Long Fight

- by Patrice Gal­lagher, No Incin­er­a­tor Alliance

On Novem­ber 20, 2014, Fred­er­ick Coun­ty, Mary­land’s Board of Coun­ty Com­mis­sion­ers can­celled plans to build a 1500 ton-per-day waste-to-ener­gy incin­er­a­tor, end­ing a 10 year cit­i­zens’ effort to kill the project and put bet­ter alter­na­tives for com­mu­ni­ty waste man­age­ment in place.

The vote was 3 to 2, and all three who vot­ed to can­cel had pre­vi­ous­ly sup­port­ed the project.

As a cit­i­zen activist who has fought this project since 2006, it feels great to final­ly be able to put this ter­ri­ble idea to rest, and begin to help our coun­ty focus on more recy­cling, repur­pos­ing and com­post­ing — per­haps in the form of a Resource Recov­ery Park, as many oth­er com­mu­ni­ties around the nation are doing successfully.

How did we do it? I sup­pose the best answer I can give for this is: per­sis­tence. The orga­nized oppo­si­tion got its start with one woman who decid­ed to edu­cate her­self and any oth­er inter­est­ed cit­i­zens by invit­ing to our com­mu­ni­ty a nation­al expert on sus­tain­able waste man­age­ment. He made a lot of sense to us… much more sense than those advo­cat­ing for a large incin­er­a­tor project — the North­east Mary­land Waste Dis­pos­al Authority.

We began as a loose coali­tion of activists from many walks of life, most of whom had no knowl­edge or expe­ri­ence in waste man­age­ment, but who edu­cat­ed our­selves along the way and were for­tu­nate to even­tu­al­ly attract nation­al experts and envi­ron­men­tal orga­ni­za­tions (includ­ing Ener­gy Jus­tice Net­work), engi­neers, lawyers and accoun­tants to our ranks, who shared their exper­tise with us and helped us make the case against incin­er­a­tion, and in favor of oth­er more eco­nom­i­cal­ly and envi­ron­men­tal­ly sound ways to think about our waste as a resource to be reused, not burned.

We worked with cit­i­zen activists in the oth­er coun­ty who signed onto the incin­er­a­tor con­tract, Car­roll Coun­ty, MD — WasteNot Car­roll — and even­tu­al­ly Fred­er­ick­’s activists formed an incor­po­rat­ed non­prof­it, the No Incin­er­a­tor Alliance.

We set up a web­site and Face­book page; we print­ed and dis­trib­uted sev­er­al thou­sand yard signs and bumper stick­ers; held ral­lies; showed up to tes­ti­fy at hear­ings; sub­mit­ted com­ments to Mary­land Dept of Envi­ron­ment on the per­mits; wrote dozens of let­ters to the edi­tors of a vari­ety of local news­pa­pers; dis­trib­uted almost 30,000 doorhang­ers to coun­ty res­i­dences about the incin­er­a­tor before the 2010 elec­tion; and with an eye toward edu­cat­ing the pub­lic and our elect­ed offi­cials about all of the worth­while oth­er ways to deal with “waste,” we orga­nized two expos about alter­na­tive waste options.

One Fred­er­ick activist began her own email cam­paign against the project, peri­od­i­cal­ly point­ing out weak­ness­es in the pro­jec­t’s con­tract to a grow­ing list of hun­dreds of email recip­i­ents, which includ­ed press and elect­ed offi­cials from around Maryland.

We ral­lied about 500 peo­ple to show up to 2 nights of hear­ings before our pre­vi­ous BOCC vot­ed to approve the project in 2009… 97% of the 100 or so speak­ers over those two nights were against the project. Nonethe­less the board vot­ed to approve, and so did Car­roll Coun­ty’s board.

On Fred­er­ick­’s Board of Coun­ty Com­mis­sion­ers, we had one elo­quent­ly vocal com­mis­sion­er who spoke out repeat­ed­ly against the incin­er­a­tor project, but in the end the vote was 4 to 1 in favor, and many peo­ple assumed the incin­er­a­tor project was, at that point, a “done deal.”

How­ev­er, we did not give up. We con­tin­ued to edu­cate the pub­lic and any elect­ed offi­cials or can­di­dates who would lis­ten, and in the 2010 elec­tion, although Fred­er­ick Coun­ty elect­ed can­di­dates who favored the incin­er­a­tor, thanks to the efforts of our col­leagues in Car­roll Coun­ty, sev­er­al of those elect­ed in Car­roll were not in favor.

Mean­while, per­mit­ting hear­ings were held in Fred­er­ick Coun­ty and again, hun­dreds of cit­i­zens turned up to tes­ti­fy — the vast major­i­ty in oppo­si­tion. We worked with a vari­ety of orga­ni­za­tions to devel­op com­ments on the per­mits and orga­nized cit­i­zens to sub­mit com­ments. More than 2,000 com­ments kept Mary­land Depart­ment of Envi­ron­ment (MDE) busy for months longer than any­one had antic­i­pat­ed, which result­ed in enough delay that it gave time for Car­roll Coun­ty’s elect­ed lead­ers to recon­sid­er their involve­ment, and they vot­ed to leave the project in April, 2014.

This was tru­ly the begin­ning of the end for the incin­er­a­tor project. After Car­roll Coun­ty left the part­ner­ship, no oth­er coun­ty or enti­ty stepped up to take their place. The neg­a­tives of the project had been made quite clear over the years — it had nev­er made sense for us to be involved, and now all of the rea­sons were pub­lic knowledge.

With no part­ner, the Fred­er­ick Coun­ty Com­mis­sion­ers had to acknowl­edge that the project could not go for­ward, and as one of their last offi­cial acts, they vot­ed to exit the con­tract and permits.

And now we have a clean slate and brand new set of oppor­tu­ni­ties for our com­mu­ni­ty. Those of us who worked so hard over so many years against the incin­er­a­tor intend to stay involved, and are look­ing for­ward now to work­ing in favor of much bet­ter meth­ods for our waste/resource management!