VICTORY: Hazardous Waste Incinerator Defeated in Bucks County, PA

A polit­i­cal­ly-con­nect­ed new com­pa­ny hoped to sneak an appli­ca­tion through dur­ing the hol­i­days for a 60 ton/day haz­ardous waste incin­er­a­tor in Bris­tol Town­ship, near Philadel­phia, PA. Once word got out late last year, polit­i­cal oppo­si­tion grew fast and furi­ous. Peo­ple packed local gov­ern­ment meet­ings to overflowing.

Ener­gy Jus­tice direc­tor, Mike Ewall, who grew up in the adja­cent town­ship, pre­sent­ed at a packed local zon­ing board hear­ing last month, fol­low­ing the com­pa­ny’s 2‑hour pre­sen­ta­tion, tear­ing down the com­pa­ny’s mis­in­for­ma­tion. One of the most appalling aspects of their mis­in­for­ma­tion was their pre­sen­ta­tion of (extreme­ly low) pro­ject­ed air emis­sions, which rep­re­sent­ed only the emis­sions from the small amount of nat­ur­al gas they’d burn to start the burn­ers up, with­out pre­sent­ing any data on the pol­lu­tants from burn­ing the waste itself.

The incin­er­a­tor would have burned alco­hols and sol­vents, clean­ers, paints, med­i­cines and phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, aerosols, pes­ti­cides, her­bi­cides and adhe­sives. It would have been locat­ed right next to a Dow Chem­i­cal plant, in a com­mu­ni­ty already suf­fer­ing from decades of chem­i­cal pollution.

Local politi­cians were falling over them­selves to oppose it, and neigh­bor­ing local gov­ern­ments, includ­ing those across the riv­er in New Jer­sey, took posi­tions opposed to the incin­er­a­tor. Today, the com­pa­ny chose to with­draw their appli­ca­tion for a zon­ing change. With the polit­i­cal winds against this com­pa­ny in all of the neigh­bor­ing towns, it seems that this heav­i­ly indus­tri­al­ized cor­ri­dor is say­ing “enough is enough” and is send­ing this incin­er­a­tor pro­pos­al pack­ing in short order. We will con­tin­ue to work with local activists to ensure that local clean air ordi­nances are in place to pro­tect these towns from any future pro­pos­als for incinerators.

Spe­cial thanks to Don Mob­ley, whose local polit­i­cal efforts made all the dif­fer­ence.  While the com­pa­ny is talk­ing like they might come back with a new appli­ca­tion, it’s clear that they have noth­ing to come back to but an even more orga­nized com­mu­ni­ty and to local politi­cians who want noth­ing of it.  As we pre­pare the nails for the cof­fin of this short-lived incin­er­a­tor pro­pos­al, it’s clear that it’s already dead on arrival.

See news arti­cles on this on our map­ping site’s page for this facil­i­ty.

This is our third major incin­er­a­tor vic­to­ry of 2014, and many more are expect­ed this year.