Updated June 9, 2025

Note: Below is an updated report on the status of Montgomery County’s waste management overhaul project. We will be updating this piece frequently in coming months. This link will take you to an article in the Spring 2025 issue of PLENTY magazine on the County’s trash overall plans. That article was written by SCA President Steven Findlay and Vice President Lauren Greenberger several months ago and contains relevant information and background on this issue.

Montgomery County continues to deliberate over the best way to: (a) reduce the volume of its trash; (b) recycle more; (c) divert food scraps to compost; and (d) shutter its aging and polluting trash incinerator.

SCA supports this initiative. But we’re frustrated with how long it’s taking to develop a coherent plan and implement it. Discussion and analyses have been underway for almost 2 years.

Granted, it’s a complex project. Many cities and counties struggle with disposing of their trash in an environmentally sound and cost-effective way. Montgomery County has the added burden of its incinerator, situated in Dickerson. Most of the county’s trash is transported there and burned.

Since 1980, 160 incinerators in the U.S. have been shuttered; only 63 remain in operation. The Dickerson incinerator is now 30 years old and requires constant costly maintenance. Most incinerators get decommissioned at around their 25 th year unless local officials close them down sooner—which is not uncommon.

The Dickerson incinerator is the worst single source of air pollution and greenhouse gases in the county—emitting toxic pollutants and some 600,000 tons per year of CO2 equivalent into our region and the planet’s air. The pollutants—dioxin, furans, lead, mercury, arsenic, sulfur dioxide, and fine particulate matter—are associated with various respiratory ailments, cardiovascular diseases, and cancer.

In the 1970s, 80s, and 90s burning trash to produce energy seemed like a great idea. Landfills deservedly had a bad reputation and landfill space was thought to be limited. New companies, branded as “waste-to-energy,” promised clean facilities. Many state and local politicians and environmental advocates bought into the concept. The lure of killing two birds with one stone was strong—diverting trash from dirty landfills while producing needed energy.

The technology did get better during those decades. But in subsequent years, evidence accumulated that the concept and designs of incinerators had inherent flaws. For one, incinerators never produced substantial amounts of energy. And they are among the dirtiest forms of energy production, even worse than coal plants. Incinerators are also initially expensive to build and, as they age, they become more polluting and less efficient.

Pressured by environmental groups (including SCA) over the past 15 years, Montgomery County leaders pledged numerous times to shutter the incinerator as soon as possible. So, it was a bit of a shock when county officials announced last November they had extended the contract with the organization that operates the incinerator for another 5 years—from April 2026 to April 2031 since the current contract is in force until April 2026.

Notably, and relevant to what follows, the county has an option for early termination of the new contract.

County officials say the main reason for extending the contract is that trash incineration cannot be terminated until (a) waste reduction strategies, (b) technological enhancements, and (c) alternatives means of trash disposal are substantially built-out and fully implemented. The county’s Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) has emphasized to county lawmakers that would take a minimum 5 years (after the end of the current contract, so in 2031).

SCA has pushed for an alternative path that could close the incinerator sooner, even as the waste system is modernized and the volume of trash reduced. Namely, we have suggested the following:

• Make no major investments in an incinerator that will be decommissioned

• Issue an RFP (request for proposal) to identify potential contractors and the costs to send the county’s trash by rail or truck (or both) to landfills that meet the highest environmental standards

• Issue a second RFP for a contractor to recycle all our construction and demolition waste

• Aggressively and urgently pursue waste reduction through enhanced recycling, food scrap composting and a county-wide effort (with financial incentives) to compel citizens to recycle more and reduce what they throw away

• Allow the Dickerson yard trim composting facility to incorporate food scraps, after the plans and impact of this change are fully vetted with SCA and the local community (See more about this below.)

• Modernize and renovate the existing waste processing facilities in Derwood and Dickerson as needed.

Incineration vs. Landfills

Studies dating back years show that incineration is more hazardous and harmful to human health than landfilling as practiced today in most locations, even when the negative impact of long-haul trucking is taken into consideration. In addition, the Dickerson incinerator’s continued operation adversely affects a majority Black community near Richmond Virginia where 150,000 tons of toxic ash from the incinerator are dumped every year.

But, not unexpectedly, some county officials and citizens have concerns about landfilling. It’s beyond the scope of this web post to explore in depth the pros and cons of trash landfills versus trash burning. That’s complex and there’s lots of research and commentary online. Every community’s choice is dependent on its own situation. For example, in some small and densely populated northern European countries, incineration remains popular because landfill space is very limited.

In Montgomery County, some elected officials are worried that sending trash outside the county is a bad thing to do. We understand the concern but think it’s misplaced. Their primary concern should be the continued risk to human health posed by the incinerator. Also:

• As mentioned above: the county already sends approximately 150,000 tons of toxic incinerator ash out-of-state

• Sending unburned trash to well-managed landfills in less populated communities would be safer for any community (usual rural areas) receiving it than toxic ash.

• Most landfills today are much better regulated and operated than even 5 years ago.

• Almost all are private businesses managed for profit. Indeed, interstate hauling of trash is a common practice and a big business throughout the U.S.

Read More

Updated April 15, 2025

Note: This is an interim update as we seek to more fully understand legislation state lawmakers passed on April 7. That legislation has major implications for the siting of ground-based (as opposed to rooftop) solar facilities on farmland in Maryland, including in Montgomery County’s 93,000-acre Agricultural Reserve. We testified on the bill and were involved in efforts to alter and improve it.

The new solar law

A new state law—The Renewable Energy Certainty Act—aims to significantly expand solar energy generation in Maryland. It does that by:

• Streamlining regulations for the assessment and approval of solar facilities

• Giving solar companies easier access to farmland—possibly around 120,000 acres throughout the state, and

• Preventing counties from denying permits for utility-scale solar projects.

The legislation directly pitted solar energy against farming and local control of land-use. In the end, its sponsors sought to strike a balance by limiting the amount of some farmland that could be put into solar (see below). Whether they succeeded or not will only become clear over time.

Opponents of the legislation have called it an unprecedented “land grab” by the state, one cloaked in the “green virtue” of expanding solar energy. (See this commentary, for example.)

Critics note that the new law includes significant state pre-emption of long-recognized local zoning laws and land-use policy—and that the legislation ignores the growing need to promote farming and food security at a local level amid the climate-change crisis.

SCA largely concurs with those assessments—even as we understand that state lawmakers were motivated by the desire to meet important renewable energy and climate-change mitigation targets set by state lawmakers over the past five years.

What was never fully clarified while the legislation was being debated and shaped was how much solar now exists in Maryland after several years of ambitious developments—on house and barn rooftops, over parking lots, and on open land and farms. Solar companies pressed hard for the legislation, in part, because big ground-based projects generate more profit.

The details

Like most legislation, the new law builds on existing law and practices. And the new law is quite complex.

Solar companies already had the right, for example, to solicit landowners/farmers for access to their land to build ground-based solar arrays. Indeed, such solicitations have flooded rural landowners’ mail boxes in the past five years. And the offers were often very generous—with proposals to lease farmland at prices 10 to 20 times what a landowner would be able to get from a contract farmer.

As a result, and not surprisingly, the number of landowners willing to carve out a part of their land for solar—usually 10 to 30 acres but sometimes up to 100 acres—has sharply increased in the past few years.

However, the approval process at the county and state level was cumbersome. The new law streamlines that regulatory process. And it blocks counties from denying approval for all but the smallest facilities as long as solar proposals meet the state’s new regs. Local jurisdictions are also required to expedite their review of even small-scale facilities.

Under the new law—which goes into effect July 1—solar projects larger than 2 megawatts (MW) just go through the state’s existing “certificate of public convenience and need” (CPCN) process, which is conducted by the state Public Service Commission (PSC). An explanation of megawatt power is presented in italics below.

Solar projects between 1 and 2 MW will continue to be reviewed primarily at the county level. But they must be approved as long as they conform to the new state regs.

[One megawatt (MW) of power is equivalent to one million watts or a thousand kilowatts (1,000 kW). On average, 1 MW of electricity can power around 1,000 homes. One MW of solar panels will generate around 2,150 megawatt hours (MWh) of solar energy per year. One MWh can power the average American home for 1.2 months or an electric car 3,600 miles.]

Landowners control the process on their private land, so the law in no way allows solar companies to seize farmland or pressure landowners into accepting their proposals. In practice, we expect more landowners will be attracted to the high land-lease fees solar companies offer.

The “compromise” on farmland

The compromise lawmakers struck was this: areas that a county has set aside and preserved for agriculture will have 95% of that land protected from solar development. (None of it was formally protected before under state law but many counties did protect such land from solar.)

Thus, that leaves 5% percent of the state’s protected ag land open for solar development (as long as a landowner wants to work with solar companies to create utility-scale solar facility).

Such protected ag lands in Maryland are called Priority Preservation Areas, or PPAs. Montgomery County’s 93,000-acre Ag Reserve is a PPA. All but four Maryland counties have PPAs. (PPAs do not include state or county parkland or other state- or county-owned land.)

Technically and legally, the new law caps the acreage that can be put in solar at 5% of any PPA. And, importantly, if the 5% cap is ever reached, control over solar permitting in a PPA area reverts to the County.

The law’s sponsors and supporters see the 5% cap as a big win for agriculture—spinning it as “95% protection.” But that’s not entirely accurate since most counties already had their own protections and rules governing solar in PPA areas. What the state did was to preempt those rules up to the 5% cap.

The Ag Reserve (AR) in Montgomery County is a well-known example of an area with such a restriction. The County Council enacted a zoning ordinance in 2021 that allows farmers and landowners in the Ag Reserve—working with solar developers—to place ground-based solar arrays on portions of their land—but only if those arrays were not sited on prime arable land (class I and II soils). Under this policy, solar arrays of up to 2MW were permitted as long as they met certain requirements and were approved by County regulators. The total acreage allowed for solar facilities in the Ag Reserve was 1,800 acres, which equates to about 2% of agricultural land in the County.

Indeed, most environmental and farm groups (including Montgomery Countryside Alliance and SCA) urged the 5% cap be reduced to 2% after the legislation’s sponsors admitted that the 5% cap was not based on any assessment of need. In fact, prior state estimates suggested that over the next 5 to 10 years around 45,000 to 50,000 acres of solar (not 100,000 or more acres) was all the open land and farmland needed for the state’s renewable energy needs. That would equate to 1.5% to 2% of PPA areas—since solar can also be built on non-PPA land.

In the Ag Reserve, based on data from the Maryland Department of Planning, PPA comprises around 103,000 acres. Five percent of that would be 5,150 acres. The Montgomery County Department of Agriculture is already working on an estimate of how much ground-based solar exists in the County and in the Ag Reserve. Montgomery County already has the second largest amount of solar energy production of all counties in the state.

There’s no official statewide count of solar projects—completed or currently being assessed. Several are in Montgomery County and in the Ag Reserve. SCA is an “intervenor” in a PSC process on two such projects proposed by Chaberton Solar, based in Rockville. SCA is joined in that proceeding by Montgomery Countryside Alliance, the Montgomery County Farm Bureau, and Montgomery Agricultural Producers. One is a 3MW project on approximately 11 acres in Dickerson. The other is a 4MW project on 16 acres near Poolesville. If approved, both would be built on fields that have been farmed for years and are mostly comprised of high-quality class 2 soils (and thus violate the 2021 Montgomery County zoning law). In addition, there’s a project proposed just outside of Barnesville that is not on Ag Reserve (and thus PPA) land.

SCA’s position

SCA agrees that a cap on solar in PPA areas is better than no cap—for now. We’ll see how that plays out. But characterizing the new law as a “big win” for the ag community is disingenuous.

Giving the state (via the PSC) almost complete control over where most solar facilities are sited, and stripping counties of any say, is inconsistent with decades of land-use, farm-oriented, and zoning public policy. As such, it sets a bad precedent not only on this issue but others. The bottom line is that counties are in a better position to regulate their own land—adhering to state environmental laws, etc.,—when it comes to balancing the need for housing, food production, commerce, and energy.

The new law’s sponsors argued vigorously that Maryland needs to generate more of its own energy—of all kinds: renewable, natural gas, nuclear, etc. But energy generation and distribution in the U.S. is shared among states with decisions about its allocation made by quasi-governmental authorities. In our area, that entity is called PJM Interconnection, LLC. PJM is responsible for operating the wholesale energy market in 13 states and DC, including Maryland. Some states produce more energy, some less.

Read More

April 10, 2025

Maryland lawmakers enacted legislation on April 7 ending Maryland’s classification of trash incineration as “renewable energy.”

It’s been considered that since 2011, as part of the state’s “renewable portfolio standard” program. As such, the energy generated in “waste-to-energy” (or “refuse-derived fuel) facilities, such as the one in Dickerson, was treated the same as energy produced by solar and wind facilities. That included subsidies to help promote renewable energy sources.

Thus, incinerators effectively took money out of the pockets of solar, wind and other clean energy companies—even as incinerators polluted the air and generated greenhouse gases. Since 2011, Maryland consumers have supported the Dickerson incinerator to the tune of around $30 million.

The new law is a huge win for environmental, civic and energy justice groups—includingSCA—which have been pushing this outcome for years.

Maryland is now the second state, after California, to delete trash incineration from its renewable energy portfolio.

“It’s about time,” said Lauren Greenberger, SCA’s vice president and main advocate on the issue. “It’s been such a ‘waste’ of money—pun intended—and has helped prop up the remaining incinerators in the state, which are too old, inefficient, and produce dirty energy.”

Added Jennifer Kunze, Maryland Program Director with Clean Water Action: “This action will help support the development of zero waste infrastructure by making it easier for composting, reuse and recycling, and other healthier solid waste management practices to compete without fighting uphill against state subsidies supporting the worst solid waste management option.”

Read More