Waste Disposal/Recycling
Updated January 22, 2026
Note: See links to related material at the end of this update.
In September 2025, Montgomery County took a giant step toward overhauling its trash management systems. The County released an RFP (request for proposal) to private companies to propose the means and methods—and cost—of disposing of the County’s 550,000 tons per year of non-recyclable trash.
The bids from that process are now in and being evaluated. They are yet not public, and it may be the case that only the specifics of the winning bid will be made public—likely this month or by early February.
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.
The choice of the winning bid launches a process of evaluation by the County Council and the public. That evaluation is primarily focused on the bidder’s plans, the expected transition period to a new system, and the cost.
The transition will be from burning the County’s trash at the Dickerson incinerator—the County’s existing system—to hauling it by truck (and maybe in the future by rail) to landfills outside the County and state. Montgomery County lacks its own landfill site.
Truck hauling of trash to the nation’s roughly 3,000 landfills is by far the most common waste management system in the U.S. It accounts for the disposal of 65% of trash after recyclable material is diverted from the “waste stream.”
The transition in Montgomery County would mean that the 30-year-old Dickerson incinerator would be shuttered—once the new system is up and running.
By contract agreement, the County must give the incinerator’s operator, ReWorld, (formerly Covanta), six-month notice that its services are no longer needed.
It’s unclear at this point the time frame the bid winner will propose.
SCA has advocated for an alternative to incineration for more than a decade, and thus we have strongly supported the County’s RFP process. The Dickerson incinerator has been and remains today 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.
As bad as breathing these toxic fumes for decades has been for our community, the situation has become dire in recent months. An annual emissions test in September revealed that the incinerator regularly emitted nearly double the permitted limit and 21 times more of the deadliest chemicals known to science—dioxin and furans—since the last test was done a full year ago. There’s no safe emissions limit established for these toxic chemicals.
SCA’s advocacy to protect County residents’ health from the incinerator’s harmful emissions has influenced County officials to search for alternatives. But the rising cost of operating the aging incinerator facility also now plays a big role. At 30 years old, its infrastructure is breaking down. Most incinerators are decommissioned after approximately 22 to 27 years of use. ReWorld estimated last year that it would cost $50 to $100 million to keep the facility operating safely and efficiently for another 7 to 10 years.
Lingering confusion
Unfortunately, confusion about how the transition would and should roll out has recently raised the specter of delay—even before the winning bid has been revealed.
The new Council President, Natali Fani-Gonzalez, has told the County’s Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) that she will “not allow” the transition to landfilling proposal to be heard by the Council without seeing a full accompanying waste reduction strategy.
Such a reduction in the waste stream is a major component of the County’s overall plan. But how that gets implemented involves additional measures, some of which are complex and will take years to implement.
For example, the County Council has already budgeted for the first phases of an expanded program to remove commercial and residential food scraps from the waste stream. Three residential food scrap collection pilots are underway. The scraps would be composted along with yard waste. Food scraps make up between 17% and 20% of the current volume of waste. (See below for more about this and SCA’s role composting food scraps.)
Another component of the plan is to remove and recycle so-called “C&D” (construction and demolition) materials in lieu of burning or burying them. The County already does some of this. But a new, beefed-up program would seek to divert 100% of this refuse. C&D waste makes up about 20% of the County’s current waste stream.
A third aspect is to integrate high-tech methods to improve the County’s recycling rate—that is, to pull all the recyclable material possible from the trash after it is collected but before it goes to landfill. DEP is currently writing an RFP to choose a vendor to build and operate such a facility within the footprint of the Shady Grove Transfer Station (where most of the County’s trash goes first for sorting.)
A fourth strategy is to implement a Save-As-You-Throw payment scheme that would allow residents to recycle as much as they want, but pay a variable amount based on the volume of trash they put out (much the way we now pay for out electricity usage.)
These are important initiatives and SCA wholeheartedly supports them. However, we cannot support delaying the incinerator closure until they can all be fully implemented. The incinerator poses too great a threat to both human health and to the environment to justify further delay.
Personnel, politics and leadership
County elections in 2026 also threaten decisions and timelines affecting this issue.
County Executive Marc Elrich will be stepping down due to term limits. But he plans to run for a seat on the 11-member County Council (on which he served for many years before becoming County Executive). Three current council members are running to replace Elrich. And a host of candidates are poised to run for the council.
To add to the shifting landscape of County leaders, the new head of the Montgomery County Department of Environmental Protection (DEP)—Jennifer Macedonia—started in that post on Dec. 1. DEP is the County agency with purview over trash management.
As mentioned above, current County Council president Natali Fani Gonzalez (who represents District 6) is threatening to block discussion and a vote on the transition plan.
County Executive Elrich is working with Ms. Macedonia and DEP to develop a plan to present to the County Council in the next month that would lay out the specifics and timing of the various elements of a new waste management system. When the plan is presented, it’s our hope that the council president will bring it to the council for review and a vote on the plan and its budget in April or May.
SCA, other stakeholders, members of the County Council, and County residents now await announcement of the winning trash haul bid and the County Executive’s and DEP’s plans.
SCA’s position on closing the Dickerson incinerator
Any further delay in transitioning away from waste incineration this year is not in the best interests of County residents.
Landfills today are better regulated and operated than even five years ago. SCA vetted 42 in the region with strict environmental justice (EJ) criteria and found many that have minimal impact on both the nearby population and the surrounding environment and five that met every EJ criterion and have receiving capacity. Toxic emissions from our incinerator that can harm human health are 2.5 to 5 times worse than the vetted landfills.
Almost all modern landfills capture methane gas. Even with food scraps going to landfill, the greenhouse gas emissions would be around 40% lower than burning trash in Dickerson.
Continuing to burn the County’s trash would almost certainly cost millions of dollars more per year. That’s because the aging incinerator requires significant upgrades and maintenance if it’s to be kept operating safely. Thus, the change from incinerating trash to landfilling it will save County taxpayers’ money.
Switching to landfill will provide direct incentives to lower trash volume where burning does not. No matter the volume, the County pays ReWorld the same amount to burn.
Conversely, if we landfill our trash, we will only pay for the amount we send. As diversion and recycling increases, our costs will drop.
Montgomery County currently trucks 150,000 tons of toxic incinerator ash every year to a predominately Black community in Virginia. Sending our unburned trash to a vetted landfill that meets environmental justice criteria relieves an unhealthy burden to this community.
The County spent more than a million dollars on studies by consultants of alternatives approaches to waste management. Although some meaningful data and points were raised in those studies, DEP found bias in the results and ended up rejecting the overall recommendations in favor of pursuing the landfill option and closing the incinerator.
The bottom line is this: If the price of truck hauling and landfill presented in the winning bid is acceptable 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 an estimated 300,000 to 400,000 tons a year (reduced from 550,000 tons a year currently) with far less environmental and health impact, and release of greenhouse gases than incineration.
We’ll be updating this post as developments occur in coming weeks and months.
In case you missed it, an article published in The Washington Post on Monday June 2 covers machinations around the Dickerson incinerator. SCA is quoted. Read the full article: Maryland county may spend $57 million on incinerator it wants to close. For those who may not have access to The Washington Post, click here to read a PDF of the full article.
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.”
Updated February 7, 2025
On Jan. 28, SCA shared its perspective on the County’s waste management plans at a briefing before the County Council. At the invitation from the Council’s new president, Kate Stewart, we shared the floor with the County’s Department of Environmental Protection (DEP).
It was a welcome opportunity to again state our opposition to the County Executive’s and DEP’s plan, announced on Nov. 25, 2024, to continue burning trash at the County’s incinerator in Dickerson for up to eight more years—rather than shutting the incinerator down in April 2026 as has been pledged for some years.
At the same time, we restated our strong support for DEP’s overall initiative to remake its waste management systems over the next decade. That initiative includes enhanced recycling, an effort to compost all the county’s food scraps (commercial and home), a simultaneous roll out of unit pricing for residential trash (pay only for what you throw away), and new processes and technologies to reduce the amount of garbage currently being burned in the trash incinerator in Dickerson.
On Nov. 25, County officials said they have authorized the Northeast Maryland Waste Disposal Authority (an entity that manages the County’s waste disposal) to extend for 5 years (from April 2026 to April 2031, and on an “emergency” basis) its contract with the private company Reworld (formerly known as Covanta), which operates the incinerator.
The announcement states that the County has the “option for early termination” of the contract. A planning timeline on the county website indicates, however, that decommissioning would not begin until 2030 with full closure not until 2031 or even 2032. DEP officials on Jan 28 affirmed that timeline to the Council. (SCA has not been granted access to the terms of the contract or the clause/section that would allow early termination.)
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, such as landfilling are substantially built-out and fully implemented. DEP claims that would take a minimum 5 years and more likely 6 to 7 years.
At the Jan 28 Council briefing, Lauren Greenberger, SCA’s Vice President, presented an alternative path that could allow the incinerator to be shuttered in 3 years (by the end of 2027). (See Lauren’s statement here.) We recommend the following:
Flesh out the County's contingency plan for incinerator closure. This would focus on immediate hauling of trash from Shady Grove to an acceptable landfill, and rolling out the infrastructure improvements as recommended by the County consultants over time.
Make no major investments in the incinerator that will soon be decommissioned.
Allow a one- to two-year contract extension and follow the timeline that Zero Waste Associates provided to meet all contractual and legal obligations to change from incineration to landfilling.
Issue an RFP as soon as possible to identify potential contractors and the costs to long-haul from Shady Grove to specified acceptable landfills under long-term contracts.
Set a firm date for closure that will allow the Dickerson Yard Trim Composting Facility to be expanded to receive food scraps quickly and in the most cost-effective manner.
In addition, and in tandem, set up a system over the next 3 years to:
Aggressively 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
Onboard new waste separation and recycling technologies on an emergency basis, with dedicated funding from the Council
Modify, modernize and renovate the existing waste processing facilities in Derwood and Dickerson as needed, with dedicated funding from the Council
According to two reports commissioned by the County Executive in recent years, such an approach would be less harmful to human health and likely less costly over time. (See Beyond Incineration report here.)
According to those and other studies, incineration is more hazardous than landfilling as practiced today, even when the negative impact of trucking is taken into consideration. In addition, the incinerator’s continued operation adversely affects a majority Black community in Virginia where 150,000 tons of toxic ash from the incinerator is dumped every year.
November 15, 2024
This month, Montgomery County launched the latest phase of its initiative to reduce food waste by encouraging businesses and residents to compost instead of discarding food scraps in the trash. (See a short video later in this article.)
Food scraps account for about one-quarter of the county's total trash volume. In 2023, the county estimates that approximately 90,000 tons of food waste ended up in the trash, most of which was incinerated at the county's facility in Dickerson.
Composting food scraps is an environmentally beneficial practice (and thus, a no-brainer), but it requires significant changes in behavior for households and businesses, as well as adaptations to the county’s waste management systems. The county has been running a pilot composting program for several years and now plans to increase participation and enhance its infrastructure.
Part of this effort includes allowing residents to “recycle” food scraps at the curbside, just as they do with glass, plastic, paper, and cardboard. The collected scraps would be transported to a central location, likely the Dickerson yard trim compost facility.
Click “Read More” to go to the full article and watch a short YouTube video of the County’s recent ceremony on the composting initiative.
A class of toxic chemicals called PFAS can contaminate water, farmland, wells, and crops. These chemicals have been linked to cancer and other diseases and do not break down in the environment. An organization called PEER (Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility) is leading an effort to probe whether PFAS chemicals are present—and if so, to what degree—on Ag Reserve land and in water sources.
Testing to date has yielded concerning results. Levels of several forms of PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances of which there are thousands) are substantially higher than EPA recommended quantities in drinking water in Poolesville. As a result, the town closed two of its 12 wells. These concerning results also led SCA and Montgomery Countryside Alliance (MCA) to join PEER in January in calling on Montgomery County officials to prohibit the use of certain PFAS-containing fertilizers, called biosolids, on county agricultural land—to prevent further contamination of ground and surface waters.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
February 20, 2026
Printable/PDF Version
Media Contact:
Lauren Greenberger
Vice President, Sugarloaf Citizens Association
lgreenberger@hotmail.com
Dioxin Leak Adds Urgency to Shuttering Montgomery County’s Aging Trash Incinerator
DICKERSON, Md. — Alarmed by reports of a recent massive dioxin leak at the aging Montgomery County trash incinerator in Dickerson, MD, Sugarloaf Citizens Association (SCA) urges the Montgomery County Council to move forward expeditiously with plans to end trash burning and haul the county’s waste to vetted landfills outside the County.
The incinerator, operated by Reworld, is currently the endpoint for all the county’s non-recyclable solid waste.
In November 2025, a report by the county’s Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) revealed that the incinerator was emitting nearly double the permitted limit—and 21 times more dioxin and furans than the last test in 2024. There is no safe emissions limit established for these toxic chemicals.
The dioxin leak from the 30-year-old incinerator comes amid longstanding concerns about health hazards to the community and local agriculture associated with trash incineration, which also produces other toxic chemical emissions such as mercury, sulfur dioxide, arsenic, beryllium, lead, nitrogen oxides and fine particulate matter into the region’s air.
Reworld estimated in 2025 that it would cost from $50 million to $100 million to keep the facility operating safely and efficiently for another 7 to 10 years. More recently, DEP cited potential costs as high as $365 million in that timeframe. Most trash incinerators are decommissioned after approximately 22 to 27 years of use.
SCA supports efforts by the executive branch and County Council to overhaul the County’s current trash management system. We are encouraged to learn that a pending contract could soon be awarded to a company that will manage the system. The choice of the winning bid launches a process of evaluation by the Council and the public. That evaluation will focus on the bidder’s plans, the expected transition period to a new system, and the cost.
When implemented, the plan will initiate hauling the County’s trash by truck (and maybe in the future by rail) to landfills, most likely outside Maryland. Montgomery County lacks its own viable landfill site. Truck hauling of trash to the nation’s roughly 3,000 landfills is by far the most common waste management system in the U.S. Only about 13% of our nation’s trash is still incinerated.
This transition would mean that the Dickerson incinerator would be shuttered—once the new system is up and running.
Montgomery County Council President Natali Fani-Gonzalez has asked DEP and County Executive Marc Elrich for more information on the transition to landfilling and ways to reduce the County’s volume of trash. She has also said in recent weeks that she will “not allow” the transition to landfilling to be debated by the Council absent full details related to waste reduction, trucking to one or more landfills, and closing the incinerator—and the associated costs of a coordinated plan for all of that.
SCA requests that the County DEP disclose the nature, duration, and scope of the dioxin leak at the Dickerson incinerator and engage the Maryland Department of the Environment to assess related health consequences.
For more information on Montgomery County’s solid waste management transition from incineration to landfill, see:
SCA’s Position on Montgomery County’s Trash Overhaul Plans
Burning or burying? The safer path for Montgomery County’s waste based on the science
Statement from the Montgomery County Department of Environmental Protection on the Maryland Department of the Environment's Violation Notice to the Operator of the County's Waste-to-Energy Facility
About Sugarloaf Citizens Association: SCA is a nonprofit organization of volunteers founded in 1973. Our primary mission is to preserve and protect the Agricultural Reserve — the 93,000 acres of northern Montgomery County zoned in the 1980s for farming, land conservation, and open space.
We also advocate for sound environmental stewardship and climate change policies in the Ag Reserve and for the county as a whole — for the benefit of all residents.
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