Why Garbage Incinerators Are A Bad Deal For Communities (Episode 68)

And I’d like to start with something very recent. Neil I was hoping you could explain how a recent city council decision in Baltimore will impact the Wheelabrator Incinerator that’s responsible for so much of the city’s industrial pollution.

The situation in Baltimore is slightly different from Montgomery County, which we can get into. But in Baltimore the Wheelabrator company owns a facility called Bresco. B-R-E-S-C-O. And that facility is about 35 to 40 years old. The city sends its non recycled waste to that incinerator in downtown Baltimore. Most of the materials generated in Baltimore go there, because the city has a very low recycling rate estimated between 14 and 19 percent. By comparison the national average is 34, and, of course, some cities are at 50, 60, and 70 percent.

So, if the city stopped sending its garbage there, in theory, because it’s a privately owned facility that facility can import garbage from anywhere they want to, Baltimore County, New York City, to fill in for the garbage that is not delivered by the city.

However, with the passage of this law … It is not signed yet. Mayor Pugh has said she was going to sign it, it has not happened yet. It will become law if she doesn’t sign it. In about five or six days it will become law. The importance of the law it will require any facility, private or public, to meet these new standards, and it will therefor prevent the incinerator from continuing to operate with private sector trash or public trash if it does not make the adjustments to pollution control that will allow it to meet best available control technology.

Vice President of the Wheelabrator corporation already mentioned that if this law came to pass they will probably … Actually he said certainly have to shut the incinerator, because the cost of putting on new pollution control equipment is about 70 million dollars, and that pollution control equipment will require about 11 million dollars a year of operating expenses. These expenses for the corporation are just too much for it to continue operating this plant. In theory, it could knock down the plant, and build a more modern plant, but that is highly unlikely.

The legislation can be used in at least 11 other states according to Mike Ewall, who wrote the bill. He works for the Energy Justice Network, and there are about 11 other states where this strategy can be used, and that would include at least eight other existing old incinerators. Detroit, Annapolis among those eight other cities that have existing plants.

I want to talk a little bit about why Baltimore took this direction in terms of the incinerator, and was hoping Marie that you could give us some of like big picture here. In your report about incineration and renewable energy you talk about three reasons that incinerators, in general, are a bad deal for communities. And I was hoping that you could just kind of walk us through those reasons, so we can understand why it is that a community like Baltimore is having such an issue with this particular facility.

The first being that the economics of these facilities really don’t add up. That incinerators are risky investments for the local governments and utilities that are helping support and subsidize them, particularly as energy prices decline, and that there are these more price competitive alternatives, which we’ll get into a little bit more as well. A growing number of these plants are unable to cover their operating costs, or the substantial investments needed to really maintain, or, as Neil was talking about, implement new pollution controls. And so, they’re costly to operate and maintain to remain competitive.

And so, we’ve seen recent examples in California and in Minnesota where existing facilities are not able to offer contracts for electricity at a competitive rate in that case. In California, for example, that helped lead to the closure of one of the states remaining facilities.

Related to this economics point the tip fees, or what waste haulers pay to dispose of waste at incinerators, are often quite a bit more costly than alternatives. So, we see two to three times higher rates of tip fee disposal than comparable recycling or composting costs. Which, again, I’m here with Neil our expert, so he can perhaps touch on some of that too as he gets more into the waste side of the equation.

And we also see that jobs, sort of local jobs, which are generated at incinerators, are quite a bit less than other alternatives. So, we see four times the number of jobs per unit of waste in composting sites, for example.

So, really there are better alternatives that exist when you look at these plants through an economics lens.

We also see the impacts on public health, and that was a big motivator for, it sounds like, the Baltimore case certainly. But incinerators are these classic cases of environmental injustice in the communities that they’ve been located in. They’re often sighted in neighborhoods that are predominantly made up of people with lower incomes, people of color as the Energy Justice Network has illustrated in some really great maps that we feature in the report.

And so, Neil has mentioned them. They’ve done some great work documenting, again, the harmful, costly, and avoidable public health risks that these incinerators present to the local communities that are living nearby.

And we also talk a little bit, I think, more about that dynamic with partners from EJN, the Energy Justice Network. And then also another great organization GAIA, whose done more work in a webinar that we hosted on the report in January. So, can point folks more to that resource.

And then, finally, we, especially in looking at this through our Energy Democracy lens, and the impacts that incinerators have on the energy sector, we argue the third point being that renewable trash, which these incinerators are often being classified under, is really a legal oxymoron. It doesn’t really make sense that burning garbage would be considered a renewable resource, but it is in the majority of states where incinerators are located. We have 52 plants operating in states that do classify trash burning as a renewable resource of energy.

So, these are three reasons that we definitely see communities pushing back against this dirty practice, and we highlight those three in our report.

I want to jump back and ask Neil, specifically, about how some of these large scale issues apply in the case of Baltimore. Just very quickly though, is Maryland one of those states that counts burning trash as renewable energy?

I’ve been fighting garbage incinerators for over 45 years now, and it’s fascinating that people get aroused because of the fear of pollution impacting their health and the environment. Ultimately it’s the economics that moves people to make the decision. In Baltimore, it was a healthy combination of both.

In terms of the pollution I’ll point out that John you mentioned 50%. The Bresco incinerator accounts for about for exactly 36% of the industrial pollution in the city as measured by the US EPA. And these health costs are very significant. Dante Swinton, an organizer for Energy Justice Network in Baltimore, did the numbers, and he estimated that the cost to the city annually, that is the city, the businesses, and the people in the city, is about 153 million dollars a year. And that comprised of absentee workers who are sick with asthma, and other ailments, school children that miss school, and also have to go to an emergency room for asthmatic conditions. That’s quite a hefty bill that the government, businesses, and citizens have to pay.

And the stimulus for trying to shut down an existing incinerator came from Curtis Bay, which is an industrially zoned community at the southern tip of Baltimore, and about four years ago the private industry was planning a 4000 ton per day garbage incinerator in the middle of Curtis Bay, which is already the heaviest polluted zip code in Baltimore. And this triggered simmering discontent in the community, which is low income, mixed white people, Black people, Latino people and Asian people, they were absolutely fed up when this 4,000 ton per day incinerator was announced, the plan for it. And through incredibly well organized citizens, led by united workers, and their staff all live in the community and went to Ben Franklin High School, these adults and young people … also adults, but just out of high school and in college, came up with incredible tactics, videos, small meetings, many, many small meetings, which mobilized the city.

Among their best tactics was a video produced by the young people in the community that was sent around to the museums, the school systems in the city and the region that had pledged to buy electricity from this planned garbage incinerator. And the video made it clear that this was dirty electricity. And one by one these institutions withdrew their offers to buy electricity from this source. That was a major accomplishment, and it led to lawyers, and doctors, and organizers from other issues on the environment to join United workers. Energy Justice Network did a whole lot of work, the institute, myself and Brenda Platt did a lot of work. The institute’s work was showing, pointing to specific examples of what government, industry, and citizens have been doing to implement alternative systems that do not have incineration.

We supported the Fillbert Street Garden, which is a community institution in Curtis Bay. We raised money to build a compost pad, that compost pad is now the basis for a collection program in nearby neighborhoods that picks up organic waste from households and businesses, brings them back to the garden for composting, and reuse. The program involves young people and also small children. There’s an elementary school right across the street, the children are growing flowers, fruits, vegetables, it’s quite an institution.

All of this mobilized the community both from the fear of pollution, and the possibilities that the 90 acres that was going to be devoted to the incinerator could now become a green industrial park with recycling, composting, solar energy projects. So the community was turned around into what’s possible, it energized their mobilization, and after the defeat of the planned incinerator in Curtis Bay, there was a seamless transition to focus on the existing incinerator, and of course, Environmental Justice did a great job in documenting the pollution.

I also want to tip my hat to Environment Justice Network because they also went deep into the weeds, working with communities surrounding the incinerator who suffer the most from the pollution, and raised money and developed a pilot recycling program. Baltimore has a very low recycling rate. There are reasons for it, the DPW, the Department of Public Works in the city just hasn’t paid attention to recycling and composting. And the Energy Justice Network pilots showed that citizens with the proper carts, proper information, and proper incentives, they were recycling at 39%. The city’s average is anywhere from 14 to 19%, so virtually a doubling of the recycling rate just by paying attention and proving that low income people, black, white, or green, will recycle and want to recycle.

But we’re going to take a quick break here and when we come back we’re going to talk about how many states are providing subsidies to trash burning through renewable energy definitions, which we touched on before. I’d like to dive into how industry consolidation is helping the incinerator industry. And then also to talk a little bit more about what we’ve already heard about, is what communities can do instead of hosting trash burners, in terms of waste processing and things that they can do to create jobs, and healthier jobs in their community.

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Building Local Power with in house guests, Marie Donahue and Neil Seldman. This is the part of a podcast where you usually hear something about a mattress company, or a meal delivery service. But the Institute for Local Self Reliance is a national organization that supports local economies. So we don’t accept national advertising. Instead, please consider making a donation to ILSR. Not only does your support underwrite this podcast, but it also helps us produce all the resources, from reports, to podcasts, to interactive maps we make available for free on our website.

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Okay, before the break we talked about how Baltimore’s incinerator is a classic case of environmental injustice. Aided and abetted by state policy that subsidizes trash burning. Marie, can you talk about how common it is that states allow burning in municipalities to counter renewable energy? You gave us the number before, and is that a subsidy that’s keeping incinerators afloat?

This designation allows incinerators to benefit from the support of renewable energy credits in states, both within states where they might be getting credits toward their electricity production, and then also has implications for out of state credits that city’s utilities may be buying to offset other sources of energy. And we see that in Maryland as well. We cited a report showing that in Maryland, for example, rate payers reportedly spent 84 million over the last decade to purchase these unbundled, out of state renewable energy credits from Virginia, which is another state that classifies incineration as a renewable resource. And that these credits were from … a majority of these credits are from dirty energy sources. So again, these are sort of indicative of how this industry is funded and supported by these renewable credits and that designation.

It allows the power that’s generated by facilities, and you’ll mention this a little bit just about how utilities, how these companies are able to market the energy as this renewable, attractive resource. And so, from at least a marketing perspective, in wholesale electricity contracts, with utilities, cities, or others, these power purchasers can tout that sort of green nature, and that green washing is really quite pervasive in the industry. It’s been used, and certainly they’ve changed the wording. Neil knows this history better than me, but that they’ve changed the wording to allow it to be more attractive and sound like it’s a better source or energy than it is, brushing aside the public health impacts and some of these other negative impacts that we discussed earlier.

That said, on the flip side of what state definitions and policies are, there are examples that we found, in Rhode Island for example, of clear bans on municipal solid waste incinerators, or ones that are keeping this explicitly out of their renewable energy goals and definitions. So that’s sort of a positive, small positive story even though that’s a rare occurrence in these states we looked at. In some cases it’s just not mentioned at all.

To be frank, the citizens and small businesses, there’s a playbook on how to kill incinerators, and you could read the playbook and organize your community, and it’s more than 50/50, much more than 50/50 that organized citizens will be able to stop it.

The consolidation of the solid waste industry is a critical component of this. The first consolidation started in the late 60s, early 70s over buying out haulers and consolidating haulers, and creating a virtual monopoly on hauling. At the same time, a virtual monopoly on landfill capacity was developed by these companies. When it comes to incinerators, it was just another form of the consolidators taking control and putting in systems that favored them, not the citizens or the environment.

But, as I indicated, that effort was stopped cold. And the effort by the waste hauling companies to add incineration monopoly to their landfill monopoly was shut down. There are remnants of those facilities that were built in the 70s and 80s, such as in Baltimore, such as in Montgomery County, actually, Montgomery County was built in the 90s. Citizens have been fighting existing plants for 20, 30 years.

The prospect of citizens winning in battles against the existing incinerators is now improving tremendously, and I think that Baltimore experience is certainly going to help citizens in Detroit, Indianapolis, Newark, New Jersey, and many other cities that still have these incinerators. There are about 50 remaining, 50 to 55 garbage incinerators remaining in the state. That’s down from over 100 a couple of decades ago.

The other important thing, as I said earlier, environment concerns, people breathing air that has mercury, and lead, and dioxide, and known killers, as well as oxides of nitrogen which are not killers but certainly impact health, gets peoples’ attention. But it’s very important for anyone fighting these plants to have a sense of what’s possible. And happily, the recycling movement across the country since the late 60s has shown what can happen, that’s both grassroots recyclers and small business recyclers. And that confidence, and that merging or pro recycling and anti incineration movements, has really made a tremendous different. And the transition away from these incinerators, it can’t be done over night, but it certainly can be done within a two to three year period. And it’s relatively simple, the transition is based on best practices. Composting, which comprises about 30 to 40% of the waste stream, is a very easy alternative to incineration and landfill. The big waste holding companies fight composting because it has the potential to take away 30 to 40% of their market, into a distributed system that’s based on local markets and local small businesses.

The other part that we recommend, it’s not essential, composting is essential. A very helpful tool, which I sometimes refer to as a magic bullet, if there is anything to get people to recycle, is unit pricing, or charging people by the amount of garbage they set out for collection, with composting set-outs and recycling set-outs either free or much, much less expensive for households to put out. This creates an immediate incentive for households to pay attention to their waste. In fact, we have documented cases through original research, as well as other research, other organizational research, that shows that when you put in unit pricing within a year to a year-and-a-half, your overall solid waste stream goes down by 40%. That’s a combination of people getting involved in recycling, composting and source reduction, meaning people don’t buy packaging that they’re gonna bring into their house and then have to pay to get collected in their curbside system.

The other thing about unit pricing, also called Pay as You Throw, Save as You Throw, smart save money as you reduce trash, is that it can help civilize American culture. The United States, people in the United States, generate 4-and-a-half pounds of garbage a day, it’s the most of any country by far in the world. It breaks out to about 3 to 3-and-a-half pounds per day when you take out the amount of recycling we’re doing.

There’s one other and last major area that cities need to pay attention to, and that’s the economic development side of recycling. As you recover materials from the waste stream and process them, you add value to them, meaning jobs and better, higher market prices. And then if you use that material in your region or in your city to manufacture new products, you get another way of economic stimulation. This is what the Institute for Local Self-Reliance is. Cities control this material, why not use it and create a local economy? And the job creation, as Marie mentioned, is very important, and to accomplish all this, cities need to designate industrial sites, whether they’re continuous or not, as some people call them, “Resource Recovery Parks.” Some people call them ecological industrial parks.

In California, where these types of recycling parks were created about 20 years ago, they’re called recycling market development zones. There are at least 30 of them throughout the state in rural and urban areas, and they give economic benefits, tax breaks, marketing assistance, to companies that locate in these parks and use the recovered materials from cities to create new jobs. There are over a hundred companies that have located in California, creating thousands of jobs, all because there are available industrial spaces specifically for companies that recycle, compost and reuse old products.

So Marie, tell us something from the report that communities can pursue, that can help them address this problem with incinerators around renewable energy.

Another excellent book is Plastic Ocean by Charles Moore, Captain Charles Moore, which deals with the plastic dilemma. The other thing I would suggest, and John already mentioned it, if you go to the Waste to Wealth blog page, we cover these issues of monopolies, single stream, the issue of China, which is important. And citizens can get a very good background just checking out our blog page at Waste to Wealth, at ilsr.org.

Thank you so much for tuning in to Building Local Power. This is John Farrell, ILSR co-director. I was speaking with two terrific guests, Marie Donahue, ILSR researcher and author of Waste Incineration: A Dirty Secret and How States Define Renewable Energy, as well as Neil Seldman, ILSR co-founder and director of our Waste to Wealth initiative.

Check out the show page for a transcript, a link to Marie’s report, and other resources, and links to the recommended books via IndieBound. While you’re at our website, you can also find more than 60 past episodes of the Building Local Power podcast, and show us some love with a contribution to help cover the costs of producing this podcast. You can also help us out by rating this podcast and sharing it with your friends on iTunes or wherever you find your podcasts.

This show is produced by the amazing Lisa Gonzales and Hibba Meraay. Our theme music is Funk Interlude by Dysfunction_AL. Please join us next time in Building Local Power.