Incinerator Victory in Prince George’s County, Maryland!

Prince George’s Coun­ty, Mary­land — the nation’s wealth­i­est African-Amer­i­can coun­ty, just out­side of Wash­ing­ton, DC — has been court­ing waste incin­er­a­tor com­pa­nies to build a new facil­i­ty in a com­mu­ni­ty that already has mul­ti­ple land­fills and the state’s only sewage sludge incin­er­a­tor.  Ener­gy Jus­tice Net­work has been cam­paign­ing against this for the past year.  Last month, the coun­ty for­mal­ly with­drew the con­tract process, aban­don­ing the project altogether!

The con­tract process in Prince George’s Coun­ty was the result of the coun­ty con­tract­ing with the noto­ri­ous­ly pro-burn sol­id waste con­sul­tants, Ger­sh­man, Brick­n­er & Brat­ton (GBB).  The coun­ty spent over $200,000 for GBB to lead them toward a who’s who of “waste-to-ener­gy” ven­dors of every stripe, which got nar­rowed down to sev­en, includ­ing the two largest incin­er­a­tor cor­po­ra­tions, Cov­an­ta and Whee­labra­tor, plus some com­pa­nies with exper­i­men­tal tech­nolo­gies such as trash-to-ethanol.  At the end of the day, the coun­ty’s urgent need for an alter­na­tive to their land­fill (which was sup­posed to close by 2020) dis­ap­peared as they found they have room until at least 2027, giv­en increased recy­cling, com­post­ing and oth­er pos­i­tive Zero Waste efforts that divert trash from the landfill.

Ener­gy Jus­tice Net­work ini­ti­at­ed a “Don’t Burn Trash in Prince George’s Coun­ty” cam­paign to inform and engage the pub­lic in the activ­i­ties of the Coun­ty on this waste-to-ener­gy trash dis­pos­al pro­cure­ment process.  Work­ing with indi­vid­ual activists and oth­er envi­ron­men­tal orga­ni­za­tions such as Pro­gres­sive Prince George’s, Green­belt Cli­mate Action Net­work and the Prince George’s Sier­ra Club, the Coun­ty offi­cials received numer­ous requests not to move for­ward with the Request for Pro­pos­als, the next step in the process, which was sched­uled to begin in Sep­tem­ber 2016.

On August 9th, the Coun­ty decid­ed to can­cel the Waste-to-Ener­gy Request for Qual­i­fi­ca­tion solic­i­ta­tion, stat­ing in the final notice that “IT HAS BEEN DETERMINED THAT THE PROJECT MAY NOT BE IN THE BEST INTEREST OF THE COUNTY AT THIS TIME.”

The Coun­ty says it will now sched­ule pub­lic input ses­sions on the Coun­ty’s Zero Waste Plan.  Last year, the Coun­ty com­mis­sioned SCS Engi­neers to devel­op a Zero Waste Plan and a Waste Char­ac­ter­i­za­tion study of the coun­ty’s waste.  The Plan and the Study are due to be released to the pub­lic some time this fall.  We’re work­ing to get the Coun­ty to devel­op a com­pre­hen­sive Zero Waste Plan (a plan that fol­lows our Zero Waste Hier­ar­chy, and does not include burning).

Sup­port­ing the fight for Zero Waste Solu­tions: Robin Lewis is an African-Amer­i­can res­i­dent and envi­ron­men­tal jus­tice activist in Prince George’s Coun­ty whose work we need to sup­port as we move the coun­ty away from incin­er­a­tion and toward gen­uine zero waste solu­tions.  If you can help sup­port her work, please donate here: https://energyjusticenetwork.org/donate

This vic­to­ry holds some major sig­nif­i­cance for envi­ron­men­tal jus­tice, for trends in Mary­land, and around the country:

Envi­ron­men­tal Jus­tice Sig­nif­i­cance: Prince George’s Coun­ty, Mary­land is the nation’s wealth­i­est African-Amer­i­can coun­ty.  This rein­forces the trend that we’ve doc­u­ment­ed across dirty ener­gy and waste indus­tries in the U.S. where race is more of a fac­tor than class in terms of where pol­lut­ing indus­tries are locat­ed.  The coun­ty is home to the state’s only sewage sludge incin­er­a­tor, mul­ti­ple land­fills and asphalt/aggregate indus­tries, a huge coal/gas pow­er plant, and a clus­ter of three gas pow­er plants on the way.  The pro­posed new “waste-to-ener­gy” project (like­ly an incin­er­a­tor of some sort) would have been locat­ed near the coun­ty’s land­fill and sludge incin­er­a­tor, in the same place an incin­er­a­tor was fought off about 30 years ago.

Mary­land Sig­nif­i­cance: Mary­land has been on the front lines of incin­er­a­tor wars.  The state is still the only one to put trash incin­er­a­tion on par with wind pow­er in a renew­able ener­gy man­date, where a major­i­ty of the state’s “renew­able” ener­gy has come from bio­mass and waste burn­ing, and land­fill gas burn­ing.  The state has also seen the most sig­nif­i­cant vic­to­ries against incin­er­a­tion in the past decade.  Two large pro­posed incin­er­a­tors got all of their state per­mits and yet were defeat­ed by con­cert­ed oppo­si­tion in the past few years, in Fred­er­ick and Bal­ti­more.  One would have been the nation’s largest, at 4,000 tons/day.  Also, ear­li­er this year, the small­est of three remain­ing trash incin­er­a­tors in the state (in Har­ford, MD) closed for good.  We still have two large incin­er­a­tors and the nation’s largest med­ical waste incin­er­a­tor to close down, two of which are in Bal­ti­more, and we’re cam­paign­ing to close them.

Nation­al Significance:

This could hap­pen to you!  GBB has con­sult­ing arrange­ments with city and coun­ty gov­ern­ments around the nation.  Unfail­ing­ly, they pro­pose “waste-to-ener­gy” ven­dors.  In Prince George’s Coun­ty, they draft­ed the Depart­ment of Envi­ron­men­t’s Request for Qual­i­fi­ca­tion (RFQ) to pur­sue waste man­age­ment solu­tions from cor­po­ra­tions to build one of these types of facil­i­ties in the Coun­ty: incin­er­a­tion, trash-to-ethanol, refuse-derived fuel (trash pel­lets to be burned in area pow­er plants), or trash com­post­ing using “gasi­fi­ca­tion, anaer­o­bic diges­tion, or oth­er con­ver­sion method pro­duc­ing a fuel or ener­gy prod­uct, such as elec­tric­i­ty, syn­gas, syn­fu­el, chem­i­cals, steam, use­able heat, and/or oth­er com­mer­cial ener­gy outputs.”

Of the 16 respon­dents to the RFQ, the Coun­ty select­ed the fol­low­ing 7 com­pa­nies in March 2016 to be on the short list: Aben­goa Bioen­er­gy, Cov­an­ta Ener­gy, LLC, Mus­tang Renew­able Pow­er, Prince George’s Coun­ty Waste To Ener­gy Recov­ery Part­ners, Repow­er South, LLC, Shanks Waste Man­age­ment Ltd., Whee­labra­tor Urbas­er, S.A.  While the pro­pos­als were not made pub­lic, our research into these com­pa­nies shows that they offer con­ven­tion­al incin­er­a­tion, gasi­fi­ca­tion, trash-to-ethanol, refuse-derived fuel (trash pel­lets), and anaer­o­bic diges­tion for munic­i­pal waste, with the digest­ed trash either being used as fer­til­iz­er or burned for fuel.

Ener­gy Jus­tice Net­work has an ongo­ing open records case to try to make this infor­ma­tion pub­lic.  In the City of Allen­town, Penn­syl­va­nia, where Ener­gy Jus­tice led the fight that stopped an incin­er­a­tor just two years ago, GBB is now con­tract­ing with the city, pur­su­ing the same sort of “waste-to-ener­gy” con­tract process.  Allen­town, unlike Prince George’s Coun­ty, released the RFQ respons­es for pub­lic review.  The basics of the pro­pos­als were released to reporters and can be viewed here: http://www.mcall.com/news/local/allentown/mc-gallery-allentown-trash-proposals-20160609-storygallery.html

GBB brags on their web­site that they’re con­sult­ing with these gov­ern­ments:
-Prince William Coun­ty, VA
-Ruther­ford Coun­ty and the City of Murfrees­boro, TN
-Lee Coun­ty, FL
-Guam

We know of oth­ers we sus­pect they’re con­sult­ing with as well.  Please reach out to us for sup­port to beat back incin­er­a­tor threats in your community.