Better and Safer Waste Management in Montgomery County
Updated Sept. 19, 2024
SCA has been working with the Montgomery County Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) and County Executive Marc Elrich for eight years to help develop a “zero waste”—or at least a “much-less-waste”—plan for the county. This effort encompasses a wide range of initiatives—from improved recycling to composting food scraps to piloting a project that would require residents to pay extra for tossing garbage that exceeds a certain per-household weight limit. The county is already testing some of these initiatives.
Central to SCA’s campaign for better waste management has been our work with the county to shutter the Dickerson trash incinerator. For nearly 30 years the incinerator has been the worst single source of pollution in the county—emitting toxic pollutants and greenhouse gases into our region’s air.
The toxins emitted—dioxin, furans, lead, mercury, arsenic, sulfur dioxide, and fine particulate matter— have been associated with many forms of cancer, respiratory, and cardiovascular diseases. The incinerator also emits 630 metric tons of CO2 per year, thus contributing to climate change.
The Dickerson incinerator is one of only two left in Maryland. It was the last new incinerator built in the United States. Dozens of similar facilities across the country younger than the one in Dickerson have been decommissioned already.
Many people ask: if Montgomery County is not going to burn its trash, what’s it going to do with it?
SCA led a county-wide coalition that, in 2021, studied this issue for over a year and produced a comprehensive 100+ page report. The report demonstrated the superiority of closing the incinerator and instituting a suite of better solid waste management measures, including those mentioned above. In addition, the report found that transporting our trash to a well-run rural landfill site was more efficient, environmentally friendly, and better for public health than burning it. Bear in mind: after incinerating our trash, we currently ship over 110,000 tons of toxic ash to a densely populated, majority black community outside -Richmond VA. This practice is far more hazardous for the receiving community than shipping our unburned trash to an out-of-state landfill that meets basic environmental justice criteria. Even using diesel trucks to ship the trash and including organic matter (such as food scraps), landfilling our trash is safer both for human health and the environment.
Given these facts, SCA is urging the county to close the incinerator by Dec. 31, 2027.
We also recognize the great value in removing organic material from the waste stream and composting that material. This practice would have a twofold benefit: First, it would make landfilling an even more environmentally beneficial strategy by further reducing the production of methane gas (yielded by organic material in landfills). Second, it would allow the County to produce high quality compost that could then be used in our agricultural and landscape sectors to increase organic matter in our soil –creating more nutrient dense soil and increasing carbon capture in farming.
At the request of the County Executive, in July 2023, SCA and its legal team met with Marc Elrich, representatives from the county’s Department of Environmental Protection, and county lawyers to discuss finding a pathway to closing the incinerator. An agreement was reached to have regular follow-up meetings to further explore waste management options. We informed county officials at the 2023 meeting, and in a subsequent follow-up letter, that SCA is prepared to support the expansion of food scrap composting at the Dickerson yard trim facility if and when we have a binding commitment that the incinerator will, in fact, be shuttered.
Since those initial meetings, we have had some good news and some unsettling news.
The good news is that the county has hired three large consulting groups to develop waste management reduction plans for the county. One, Arcadis, is charged with identifying new technologies the county could build out to draw more products out of our waste stream. The second group, Barton and Loguidice, was hired to manage the implementation of these strategies. The third was a top tier consulting firm, EA Engineering, to advise the County on best practices for managing organics.
The unsettling news is that the County Executive (Marc Elrich) appears to be ignoring the evidence in the three major reports he commissioned that show the hazards of continuing to incinerate. Further, Mr. Elrich has said that he will not close the incinerator until he can get a nearly two-thirds reduction in trash. This decision is in direct contrast to the letter he wrote in 2021 to the County Council promising to close the incinerator in 12 to 18 months. He has clearly reneged on this promise.
If Mr. Elrich and his administration persist on sticking to the two-thirds reduction stipulation, it could very well mean the incinerator will be operating for another five to 10 years.
The justification the Elrich administration gives for this strategy is that transporting to landfill could be more costly than burning. The comparative costs, however, are still an unresolved question. The incinerator is rapidly aging and will require significant capital costs in the coming years to keep it operating safely. Why should the county invest millions of dollars in a technology that soon will be decommissioned?
In addition, and more importantly, even if the per ton cost of landfilling out-of-state turns out to be higher than for incineration, the life-cycle cost of burning is far more when you include the “costs” (a) to human health from breathing the toxic emissions in Montgomery County and in Henrico County, Virginia, (where the county dump its toxic ash), and (b) the environmental damage caused by the greenhouse gases emitted via incineration. Taking these factors into account, the cost per ton of landfilling comes to between $50- $103. The cost of incineration is $259 per ton.*
SCA will continue to work with the County Executive and County Council to persuade them to stop endangering the county’s residents. We stand firm that incinerator closure and the development of zero waste practices must occur in tandem, not sequentially, as the County Executive is currently promoting.--
We’ll keep you updated as our conversations with the county continue.
*For an in-depth analysis on incineration, landfilling and best practices that do the least harm, see the report, Beyond Incineration, on our website, that SCA sponsored at the request of the County Executive.