Maryland Dumps Incineration

- by Mike Ewall, Ener­gy Jus­tice Network

VICTORY!!  For a sec­ond year in a row, pro-incin­er­a­tor leg­is­la­tion in Mary­land was defeat­ed.  This stealthy leg­is­la­tion was writ­ten by Cov­an­ta (the nation’s largest trash incin­er­a­tion com­pa­ny) and would put Mary­land on the path to burn­ing near­ly all of the waste that isn’t recycled. 

The leg­is­la­tion takes the Renew­able Port­fo­lio Stan­dard con­cept (which man­dates a phase-in of renew­able ener­gy) and applies it to munic­i­pal sol­id waste (trash).  With­out even men­tion­ing incin­er­a­tion, this “Recy­cling and Land­fill Diver­sion Port­fo­lio Stan­dard” would move the state toward increased recy­cling, but require that the remain­der be divert­ed from direct dump­ing in land­fills. Rather than move away from both land­fills and incin­er­a­tors, the bill would cre­ate the mar­ket for burn­ing near­ly all of the non-recy­cled waste in the state, before dump­ing the ash in land­fills. This fits with efforts by many cor­po­ra­tions and cities to hijack the con­cept of “zero waste” to make it mean “zero waste to land­fill”— push­ing incin­er­a­tion and pre­tend­ing that the ash isn’t then dumped in landfills.

In 2011, Mary­land was the first state to bump trash incin­er­a­tion into Tier I of their Renew­able Port­fo­lio Stan­dard, putting it in com­pe­ti­tion with wind pow­er. This awful idea, pio­neered in Mary­land, is now being pushed in sev­er­al oth­er states. Please look out in your state for these covert attempts to pro­mote incin­er­a­tion in the guise of recy­cling and “land­fill diver­sion.“

This bill in Mary­land passed the Mary­land House, but was stopped in the Sen­ate when their Edu­ca­tion, Health and Envi­ron­men­tal Affairs Com­mit­tee vot­ed unan­i­mous­ly (11 to zero) to reject the bill. See www.energyjusticenetwork.org/md/ for more infor­ma­tion on this and oth­er pro-incin­er­a­tion bills we worked to stop (all of which are dead for this year).

Many thanks to all who helped stop this mis­guid­ed leg­is­la­tion, most espe­cial­ly Greg Smith of Com­mu­ni­ty Research and the fol­low­ing orga­ni­za­tions: Assateague Coastal Trust, Chesa­peake Physi­cians for Social Respon­si­bil­i­ty, Clean Water Action, Com­mu­ni­ty Research, Crab­shell Alliance, Ener­gy Jus­tice Net­work, Food & Water Watch, Free Your Voice, Insti­tute for Local Self-Reliance, No Incin­er­a­tor Alliance, Sier­ra Club, Unit­ed Work­ers, Waste Not! Car­roll, Wicomi­co Envi­ron­men­tal Trust, and Zero Waste Prince George’s.