Baltimore Incinerator Proposal Permit Yanked

On March 17, the per­mit for the Ener­gy Answers trash incin­er­a­tor planned for the Cur­tis Bay neigh­bor­hood of Bal­ti­more, Mary­land was declared invalid by the Mary­land Depart­ment of the Envi­ron­ment, cap­ping years of protest from local res­i­dents and a stu­dent-led orga­ni­za­tion, Free Your Voice, part of Unit­ed Workers.

The pro­posed incin­er­a­tor would be the largest in the nation, burn­ing 4,000 tons/day of refuse-derived fuel (trash pel­lets), tires, shred­ded cars and wood waste.  In 2015, all 22 pub­lic enti­ties that signed up to buy the incinerator’s “renew­able” elec­tric­i­ty backed out of the con­tracts when they had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to do so, in response to a coali­tion cam­paign led by Free Your Voice and Unit­ed Workers.

When debat­ing Ener­gy Answers’ CEO last month in a com­mu­ni­ty meet­ing, we got them to admit that they have no waste con­tracts in hand. With no ener­gy or waste con­tracts, and an inval­i­dat­ed air per­mit, we hope that Ener­gy Answers will final­ly admit defeat. They’re cling­ing to their long-term lease over a large indus­tri­al prop­er­ty that the com­mu­ni­ty would like to see repur­posed for a solar project and oth­er com­mu­ni­ty-guid­ed uses.

The air per­mit has been con­test­ed for a few years now, since Ener­gy Answers failed to start con­struc­tion with­in the required 18 month peri­od. They were grant­ed an exten­sion, and still blew their con­struc­tion dead­lines, pre­tend­ing to start, then leav­ing anoth­er 18 month peri­od of no activ­i­ty, which also vio­lates air per­mits. We joined a cou­ple hun­dred peo­ple in protest­ing the state envi­ron­men­tal agency in Decem­ber, when sev­en com­mu­ni­ties got arrest­ed sit­ting in the agency’s offices.  Three months lat­er, under sus­tained pres­sure, the per­mit, ini­tial­ly grant­ed in 2010, was invalidated.

Accord­ing to the Envi­ron­men­tal Integri­ty Project, the south­east Bal­ti­more area around Cur­tis Bay had the high­est amount of air pol­lu­tion in Mary­land in 2007 and 2008, first in the coun­try for quan­ti­ty of tox­ic air pol­lu­tants. Bal­ti­more has the high­est rate of air pol­lu­tion deaths in the nation.

Bal­ti­more is con­sid­ered an envi­ron­men­tal jus­tice com­mu­ni­ty with high per­cent­ages of com­mu­ni­ties of color.

South­east Bal­ti­more still hosts the nation’s largest med­ical waste incin­er­a­tor, Cur­tis Bay Ener­gy, and the Quar­an­tine Road Land­fill, which accepts ash from the Whee­labra­tor Bal­ti­more trash incin­er­a­tor, in oper­a­tion since 1985. Burn­ing up to 2,250 tons/day, Whee­labra­tor is the largest of two remain­ing trash incin­er­a­tors in the state, and is the city’s largest pol­luter.  Ener­gy Jus­tice Net­work is lead­ing the cam­paign to close it down.