Organized citizens and small business owners in Carroll and Frederick Counties, MD just completed a 10-year battle to stop the implementation of a 1,500 ton per day mass burn garbage incinerator facility. The effort brought out the best in local activism: careful analysis of the contract and its financial implications, sophisticated use of media, many small meetings with civic groups, public demonstrations, confronting elected officials and state authority on conflict of interest as well as failure to understand the contracts before them, and, above all, perseverance in pursuit of sound recycling and economic alternatives. The rest of the US will benefit from this outcome as several citizens who became involved in the local battle are now national experts and are helping other communities face similar challenges.
ILSR has been part of this effort since being invited to intervene at the request of a small business woman in 2004. The Frederick-Carroll incinerator was one of three that ILSR helped defeat in the last year. ILSR remains engaged in the effort to stop a planned 4,000 ton per day garbage incinerator in south Baltimore.
Read the story here from the Frederick News Post, November 21, 2014
