Baltimore Residents Face Potential Risks from New Incinerator

- by Jaisal Noor, May 27, 2014, The Real News 

VIDEO HERE

JAISAL NOOR, TRNN PRODUCER: This is Bal­ti­more’s Ben­jamin Franklin High. Will a the coun­try’s largest incin­er­a­tor, being built just one mile from here, endan­ger the health of the stu­dents at the school?

The Ener­gy Answers Fair­field Renew­able Ener­gy Project will burn 4,000 tons of trash, shred­ded tires, and cars each day.

Sup­port­ers say it will adhere to the strictest air pol­lu­tion con­trols in the country.

PATRICK MAHONEY, PRESIDENT AND CEO, ENERGY ANSWERS INT’L: We view this as a kick­off for the revi­tal­iza­tion of this impor­tant indus­tri­al area.

ROBERT PERCIASEPE, DEPUTY ADMINISTRATOR, EPA: It’s projects like this that show the right thing to do for the envi­ron­ment is also the right thing to do for the econ­o­my. We don’t have to choose between the two.

NOOR: But crit­ics say exist­ing reg­u­la­tions do not pro­tect pub­lic safe­ty. And even if the plant could stay with­in reg­u­la­tions, it could still endan­ger the com­mu­ni­ty here.

DESTINY WATFORD, ACTIVIST: It real­ly scares me, because this project is going to cause a lot of pol­lu­tion, and it’s haz­ardous to the envi­ron­ment, and our health is going to be affected.

NOOR: We take a look at the sci­ence behind the debate.

MICHAEL TRUSH, DEPUTY DIRECTOR, JOHNS HOPKINS CENTER FOR URBAN ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH: The main thing you’re con­cerned about with a lot of this, par­tic­u­lar­ly air pol­lu­tion com­ing up, is the impact of chil­dren and asthma.

DR. SACOBY WILSON, ASST. PROF. MARYLAND INSTITUTE FOR APPLIED ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH: Envi­ron­men­tal jus­tice is talk­ing about the dis­pro­por­tion­al bur­den of envi­ron­men­tal haz­ards, unhealthy land uses on com­mu­ni­ties that are under­served, mar­gin­al­ized, and eco­nom­i­cal­ly dis­ad­van­taged. And this com­mu­ni­ty’s been dumped on for years by var­i­ous pol­lu­tion sources [snip] that can be trans­ferred to the pla­cen­ta. It can be trans­ferred through breast milk. It can have an impact on neona­tal devel­op­ment. It can have an impact–little kids. It can have an impact across the whole life course. So that infor­ma­tion’s very impor­tant so peo­ple can be empow­ered and be informed and real­ly fight against this, but also oth­er pol­lu­tion sources.

NOOR: We reached out to Ener­gy Answers, the com­pa­ny behind the incin­er­a­tor, but they declined our repeat­ed inter­view requests. They did send us a state­ment say­ing they worked hard to, quote, “… ensure the facil­i­ty will meet or be below the applic­a­ble State and Fed­er­al stan­dards. We were impressed with the lev­el of assess­ment per­formed by the Pub­lic Ser­vice Com­mis­sion and oth­er rel­e­vant agen­cies through­out the process and are con­fi­dent that their deter­mi­na­tions serve the pub­lic inter­ests well.”

State and city offi­cials also declined repeat­ed inter­view requests. We were direct­ed to a 19-page response to pub­lic con­cerns authored by the Mary­land Depart­ment of Nat­ur­al Resources and Mary­land Depart­ment of the Environment.

They “con­clud­ed the incin­er­a­tor can be designed to stay with­in per­mit­ted lim­its for tox­ic air pol­lu­tants”. To ensure com­pli­ance, the incin­er­a­tor will use Best Avail­able Con­trol Tech­nol­o­gy (BACT) for air tox­i­cs and emis­sion lim­its on diox­in and oth­er pol­lu­tants. It must also use con­tin­u­ous emis­sions mon­i­tor­ing sys­tems (CEMS) to show it always remains in emis­sion lim­its for nitro­gen oxide, sul­fur oxides, car­bon monox­ide, hydrochlo­ric acid, and mer­cury. They also empha­sized the facil­i­ty’s emis­sion lim­its are more strin­gent than required by the fed­er­al Clean Air Act.

Ron Saff is an assis­tant clin­i­cal pro­fes­sor of med­i­cine at the Flori­da State Uni­ver­si­ty Col­lege of Med­i­cine in Tal­la­has­see and suc­cess­ful­ly fought against the con­struc­tion of an incin­er­a­tor there.

DR. RON SAFF, ASST. CLINICAL PROF. OF MEDICINE, FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF MEDICINE: What they say is we’re using the best tech­nolo­gies avail­able and that we’re meet­ing all state and fed­er­al guide­lines. But the point here is that the best tech­nolo­gies avail­able aren’t pro­tec­tive of human health. And the state and fed­er­al reg­u­la­tions are not strin­gent enough to pro­tect human health.

NOOR: Oppo­nents note even with emis­sion con­trols the incin­er­a­tor is still per­mit­ted to release hun­dreds of tons of pol­lu­tants like sul­fur diox­ide, nitro­gen oxide, and car­bon monox­ide. The plant is also per­mit­ted to release 240 pounds of Mer­cury. But if it releas­es more than 56 pounds, it’s required to decrease mer­cury in the state’s streams.

Again, Ron Saff.

SAFF: Sci­ence has now shown that for some pop­u­la­tions there’s no safe lev­el of these pol­lu­tants. So for some pop­u­la­tions, those who are most pre­dis­posed to par­ti­cle pol­lu­tion are infants and the very elder­ly and those with under­ly­ing heart dis­ease. And sci­ence is now show­ing that there’s, like, no safe lev­el, which means that even a tee­ny, tiny amount can cause harm.

NOOR: Stud­ies of long-term expo­sure to fine par­tic­u­late air pol­lu­tion pub­lished in The Jour­nal of the Amer­i­can Med­ical Asso­ci­a­tion have found sig­nif­i­cant increas­es in lung can­cer mor­tal­i­ty even after tak­ing indi­vid­ual behav­ior into account. Research pub­lished with­in just the past five months have found delayed neu­rode­vel­op­ment, adverse effects on lung devel­op­ment, and increased instances of pneu­mo­nia and ear infec­tions among chil­dren exposed to air pol­lu­tion of the kind that will be emit­ted by the incinerator.

Also of con­cern is the impact on the pub­lic schools locat­ed with­in a one-mile radius of the facility.

Michael Trush is deputy direc­tor of Johns Hop­kins Cen­ter for Urban Envi­ron­men­tal Health and direc­tor of Com­mu­ni­ty Out­reach and Engage­ment Core pro­fes­sor. He col­lab­o­rat­ed with the EPA to study air pol­lu­tion in Cur­tis Bay. He calls it the ground zero for air pol­lu­tion in Baltimore.

TRUSH: The main thing you’re con­cerned about with a lot of this, par­tic­u­lar­ly air pol­lu­tion com­ing up, is the impact of chil­dren and asth­ma. If you’re going to be putting out par­tic­u­late mat­ter, there’s going to be nitro­gen oxides and things of this nature, you have to be con­cerned about that with chil­dren, and those par­tic­u­lar­ly that are asth­mat­ics. Bal­ti­more City in gen­er­al has very high asth­mat­ic rates. And the prox­im­i­ty to schools–what’s the ratio­nale to locat­ing it there ver­sus in oth­er locations?

NOOR: Both Ener­gy Answers and the Mary­land Depart­ment of Envi­ron­ment declined our repeat­ed inter­view requests.