Updated October 27, 2025

Below is an updated post on the status of Montgomery County’s waste management overhaul project. We’ll be updating this post over the coming months.

This link will take you to an article in the Spring 2025 issue of PLENTY magazine on the County’s trash plans. The article was written by SCA President Steven Findlay and Vice President Lauren Greenberger and contains relevant background information on this issue.

On September 19, Montgomery County took a big step towards overhauling its trash management systems. The County released an open RFP (request for proposal) to private companies to propose the means and methods—and cost—of disposing of the County’s 550,000 tons a year of non-recyclable trash.

The winner of this bid process will be expected to manage the system they propose for an initial five years, with the likelihood the contract would continue beyond that point if all goes well.

Proposals from the companies are due by November 11, 2025. The County’s Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) and Executive Office are expected to make a choice by January 2026. They’ll then take that choice to the County Council for budget approval.

A transition to the new system could begin as early as July 2026.

The County’s RFP specifies that disposal of all non-recycled trash transition from being burned—in the County’s 30-year-old incinerator in Dickerson—to being hauled by truck to landfills in surrounding states. Montgomery County lacks its own landfill site.

Truck hauling to the nation’s roughly 3,000 landfills is by far the most common waste management system in the U.S., accounting for 65% of trash after recyclable material is diverted from the “waste stream” and processed separately.

SCA has advocated for an alternative to incineration for more than a decade, and thus strongly supports the County’s RFP process. The Dickerson incinerator is the worst single source of air pollution and greenhouse gases in the County—emitting toxic pollutants harmful to human health and some 600,000 tons per year of CO2 equivalent into our region’s air.

We eagerly await the County’s assessment of the proposals. SCA's role in getting to this point has been substantial. Our commitment and advocacy to protect our community (and the entire County) from the incinerator’s harmful emissions has—albeit slowly—nudged the County’s officials to search for alternatives.

In addition, SCA has some legal authority over a proposed expansion of the County’s yard waste compost facility, also in Dickerson. That purview dates back to a legal settlement in the 1990s after the County broke environmental rules in our area.

How are the two—trash management and the compost facility—now connected?

The County’s waste management overhaul includes a proposal to expand the compost facility to add food scraps to the existing mix of yard waste. The scraps would be removed from the waste stream and trucked to the facility. Food scraps make up about 17% by volume of the County’s waste. So, this process would, over time, significantly reduce the volume of waste that’s headed to landfill. And it would essentially recycle food waste into a product (Leafgro®) that’s already popular with farmers, gardeners and homeowners.

The County already encourages food scrap composting from restaurants and grocery stores, and has three pilot residential pick-up projects. The County Council allocated $28 million this year to implement the food scrap project at Dickerson. Planning has begun.

Over the past two years, as the broader trash discussion has evolved, SCA has leveraged its authority over the compost facility to pressure the County to close the incinerator and choose the better option of truck hauling. After much analysis of their own and dialogue with many stakeholders, including SCA, the County’s Executive Office and Department of Environmental Protection believe that halting the burning of the County’s trash is the preferred option.

We view this as a win-win: an end to harmful emissions, more recycling and composting yielding a 20% or more reduction in trash volume, and an improved and larger volume of Leafgro®.

SCA is in active negotiations with the County about the expansion of the compost facility. Many questions remain to be answered about how the facility will be expanded, how it will operate and how it will impact the community. The County must present SCA and the community with a detailed operational plan before any agreement can be considered. We expect to receive a draft of that plan this fall. The community will have an opportunity to air concerns and ask questions of County officials.

Importantly, one outcome of the RFP process will be a binding date for closure of the Dickerson Incinerator. If all goes well, that closure could come as early as the end of 2026. Such a binding date will smooth the path for any SCA agreement to expand the compost facility.

Lingering opposition

Understandably, some residents and County elected officials remain wary of sending the County’s trash to other states. Others continue to favor trash incineration. The issue is complex. Trash removal and disposal are necessary community functions that have always presented challenges, problems and risks. It’s also a highly localized issue as well, with decisions driven by local and regional limitations and preferences.

In Montgomery County, there’s been much to consider. One compelling reason to truck our non-recyclable trash to a landfill rather than burning it is that we are currently sending approximately 150,000 tons of toxic incinerator ash out-of-state every year—to a predominately Black community in Virginia. This is far more hazardous for this receiving community than sending our unburned trash to a vetted landfill that meets environmental justice (EJ) criteria.

We believe the bottom line is this: If the price of truck hauling is right and if the County enhances its recycling rate even further, diverts food scraps to compost, and incentivizes businesses and citizens to produce less garbage through behavioral change, the volume of trash going annually to landfill from Montgomery County could be reduced (over time) to 300,000 to 400,000 tons (down from 550,000 tons today). All with far less environmental impact and release of greenhouse gases.

Updated: July 18, 2025

Note: The Summer 2025 issue of PLENTY magazine features an article by SCA President Steven Findlay on the new state solar law, which went into effect July 1. The piece explores how the legislation evolved, what it does, and the debate surrounding it.

Click here to view/download the full article.

Below is an updated web post on this issue. Details on the new law—which are complex—can be found in the PLENTY piece and are not addressed in this post.

A new state law—The Renewable Energy Certainty Act—went into effect on July 1. It aims to significantly expand solar energy generation in Maryland. It does that by:

• Streamlining regulations for the assessment of proposed ground-based solar facilities

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

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

We’ll now see how the law affects the solar industry—whether it prompts a flood or just a trickle of new proposals. We’ll see how the state’s Public Service Commission (PSC), which is charged with reviewing solar proposals, adapts its process to the new law. We’ll see how easily the state’s energy companies and regulators accommodate new solar proposals—that is, accept them for addition to the grid, and in what timeframe. And, finally, we’ll see just how many landowners/farmers in the Ag Reserve are interested in converting some of their land from agriculture to solar energy generation.

Before the law passed the legislature in April, no certainty existed around the scope of landowner interest, beyond the anecdotal and a few projects already in process.

Joined by Montgomery Countryside Alliance (MCA), the Montgomery Farm Bureau (MFB), and Montgomery Agricultural Producers (MAP), SCA will be closely tracking implementation of the law and solar proposals in the Ag Reserve and Montgomery County.

The state’s Department of Agriculture is due to release a fact sheet and Q&A on the law soon. We’ll share those with you when we get them.

Solar companies continue to contact landowners in and near the Ag Reserve, offering to evaluate their land for possible solar development. Neither state nor county officials appear to be tracking those offers. Landowners have reported solar offers that would net them 10 to 20 times more money than leasing to a farmer.

That issue and the concept of converting historically agricultural land to non-farm use triggered fierce opposition to the new law in some quarters. SCA shared that concern and fought to amend the bill.

Our main concern: the law appears to create a “slippery slope” that could undermine the ag economy and Ag Reserve over time. But just how steep that slippery slope might be depends on many factors—not the least of which is how the entities that regulate energy supply react.

The most important of those entities is PJM Interconnection. PJM is responsible for operating the wholesale energy market in 13 states and Washington, DC, including Maryland. For years, PJM has told state lawmakers and regulators that it was “backlogged” on solar projects—because such projects had proliferated. Will that backlog now change under the new law and amid rising energy demand? It’s not clear.

Several local solar projects in the regulatory pipeline may provide further insight on how things will go.

One (Chaberton Sugarloaf) is a 3-megawatt project on approximately 11 acres in Dickerson. Another (Chaberton Ramiere) is a 4-megawatt project on 16 acres near Poolesville. A third (Mountain Vale) is a 2-megawatt project on 11 acres at 17700 Barnesville Rd. And a fourth (Project Victoria) is a 4.3-megawatt project at 15220 River Rd in Darnestown (as sister to a 2.5-megawatt solar installation nearby at 13330 Signal Tree Lane, which is already approved and under construction.)

Three of those projects (Dickerson, Poolesville, and Darnestown) are proposed by Chaberton Solar, a company based in Rockville. If approved by the PSC, Chaberton Sugarloaf and Ramiere would be built on land that have been farmed for years and mostly comprised of high-quality class 2 soils.

SCA is an “intervenor” in the PSC process on Chaberton Sugarloaf and Ramiere, together with MCA, MAP and MFB.

See here for information on an upcoming hearing on the Montvale project. And see here for information (from community opponents) on the Victoria project.

We welcome your comments and questions on this issue. They will help inform our advocacy. We’ll be updating this post as things evolve.

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.”