WE WON!! Environmental Justice Victory in DC, as Mayor Pulls Incinerator Contract

- by Mike Ewall, Ener­gy Jus­tice Network

We just stopped Wash­ing­ton, DC from approv­ing a $36–78 mil­lion con­tract that was award­ed to Cov­an­ta to burn the Dis­tric­t’s waste for the next 5–11 years.

In a rigged bid­ding process, the city allowed just four incin­er­a­tors (no land­fills) to bid to take 200,000 tons of waste a year. The one of the four that is in a rur­al white com­mu­ni­ty does not accept out-of-coun­ty waste, leav­ing three incin­er­a­tors in heav­i­ly pop­u­lat­ed com­mu­ni­ties of col­or as the only ones eli­gi­ble to bid. The con­tract was award­ed to Cov­an­ta’s incin­er­a­tor in Lor­ton, VA — 4th largest in the nation and one of the largest pol­luters in the DC metro region. Lor­ton is the 12th most diverse com­mu­ni­ty of col­or in the nation, and is also home to a sewage sludge incin­er­a­tor and three land­fills.

As I doc­u­ment­ed in an arti­cle last year, DC’s waste sys­tem is a glar­ing exam­ple of envi­ron­men­tal racism, from where the waste trans­fer sta­tions are, to where much of it ends up in Lor­ton. On the way to this lat­est vic­to­ry, we got the large (389 liv­ing unit) coop­er­a­tive where I live in DC to change its waste con­tract to dis­al­low incin­er­a­tion, a tiny step toward starv­ing the Cov­an­ta incin­er­a­tor. Now, we have a chance to shift the entire city away from incin­er­a­tion. I hope we can also repeat this in Philadel­phia as their Cov­an­ta con­tract (for burn­ing in Chester, PA) comes up for renew­al in each of the next few years.

We did our home­work and made a strong case, got diverse allies on board, edu­cat­ed and pres­sured DC city coun­cil, and flat­tened Cov­an­ta’s 11th hour lies. Ener­gy Jus­tice Net­work was joined by 20 envi­ron­men­tal, pub­lic health, civ­il rights and busi­ness orga­ni­za­tions in call­ing on city coun­cil not to move the con­tract to final approval, and ulti­mate­ly, our new may­or with­drew it from con­sid­er­a­tion, killing it.

The city will now have to cut a 1‑year con­tract (hope­ful­ly not with any incin­er­a­tor, if we can help it). This buys us time to con­vince city lead­ers that incin­er­a­tors are indeed worse than land­fills and that we need to resort to land­fill­ing as we get the city’s zero waste goals imple­ment­ed, includ­ing diges­tion of resid­u­als pri­or to land­fill­ing.

Last sum­mer, we helped pass a law that bans Sty­ro­foam and oth­er food ser­vice-ware that isn’t recy­clable or com­postable, gets e‑waste and com­post­ing going, and requires the city to come up with a zero waste plan (and we got it amend­ed to ensure that incin­er­a­tion is not con­sid­ered “diver­sion,” but “dis­pos­al”). We’re at a good cross­roads in DC, where we can get the nation’s cap­i­tal set­ting good exam­ples. The long-stand­ing head of the Depart­ment of Pub­lic Works is step­ping down, giv­ing the city a chance to replace him and oth­ers anti-recy­cling incin­er­a­tor zealots in the agency with real zero waste lead­ers. Any good can­di­dates are encour­aged to apply here.

Spe­cial thanks to Chris Weiss, Jim Schul­man, Jen Dick­man, Neil Seld­man, Ruthie Mundell, Matt Gra­vatt, Erin Buchanan, Kevin Stew­art, Brent Bolin, and the fol­low­ing groups who all joined forces to make this vic­to­ry pos­si­ble: 350 DC, Amer­i­can Lung Asso­ci­a­tion, Breathe DC, Inc., Cen­ter for Bio­log­i­cal Diver­si­ty, Chesa­peake Sus­tain­able Busi­ness Coun­cil, Clean Water Action, Com­mu­ni­ty Fork­lift, Com­mu­ni­ty Well­ness Alliance, DC Cli­mate Action, DC Envi­ron­men­tal Net­work, Empow­er DC, Food & Water Watch, Glob­al Green USA, Green Cross Inter­na­tion­al, Insti­tute for Local Self-Reliance, NAACP DC Branch, Moms Clean Air Force — DC Chap­ter, Save Amer­i­ca’s Forests, SCRAP DC, and Sier­ra Club DC Chapter.