Environmental Justice in Washington, DC

Wash­ing­ton, DC’s His­to­ry with Waste Incineration

DC’s Waste and Envi­ron­men­tal Racism

Back­ground from 2025 fight to Stop DC from Con­tract­ing to Burn its Trash

VICTORY! DC Pass­es Sty­ro­foam Ban and Bill to Boost Recy­cling and Com­post­ing! (July 2014)

Doc­u­ments from our Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion Act (FOIA) requests to DC’s Depart­ment of Pub­lic Works

Like our DC Envi­ron­men­tal Jus­tice Face­book page!

Environmental justice issues in DC:

Ben­ning Road — host­ed the city’s trash incin­er­a­tor from 1972–1994; host­ed the oil-fired Pep­co pow­er plant that shut down in June 2012, leav­ing behind a tox­ic waste site around which is a cur­rent strug­gle over how the cleanup will go; hosts one of the city’s two trash trans­fer sta­tions, and around 2012–2013, was the only like­ly loca­tion for a new incin­er­a­tor being con­sid­ered by city offi­cials.  See our fact­sheet on trash incin­er­a­tion.

Kenil­worth Land­fill — right next to Ben­ning Road site; Super­fund site that Nation­al Park Ser­vice plans to “clean up” by dump­ing a cou­ple feet of soil on it

Fort Tot­ten — hosts the city’s oth­er trash trans­fer sta­tion

Brent­wood and Lang­don — hosts all three of the pri­vate trash trans­fer sta­tions in the city: Fed­er­al IPC, Rodgers Broth­ers, and WMI North­east  .  

Ivy City — cur­rent strug­gle against a planned bus depot; pol­lu­tion from city main­te­nance vehi­cles

Blue Plains — hosts the world’s largest “advanced” sewage treat­ment plant; the tox­ic sludge is dumped on farm fields in the region and some might be used to grow “ener­gy crops” for burn­ing as renew­able ener­gy

Navy Yard and numer­ous oth­er loca­tions — mil­i­tary tox­ic waste sites and buried muni­tions (even in the wealthy Spring Val­ley community)

South­west / Buz­zard Point – pro­posed DC Unit­ed soc­cer sta­di­um on tox­ic waste sites that won’t be ful­ly cleaned up; pro­posed Pep­co elec­tri­cal sub­sta­tion adja­cent to African-Amer­i­can com­mu­ni­ty, to serve elec­tric needs of gen­tri­fy­ing Water­front neigh­bor­hood; Buz­zard Point hosts the oth­er main (oil-fired) Pep­co pow­er plant, also shut down in 2012, but not torn town like the one at Ben­ning Road was; oth­er nox­ious facil­i­ties in that SW DC neigh­bor­hood as well, includ­ing scrap­yards and con­crete facil­i­ties, and pos­si­ble ille­gal waste burning

Capi­tol Pow­er Plant — more upscale area, but close to low-income and com­mu­ni­ties of col­or — burn­ing nat­ur­al gas and coal; cur­rent cam­paign to stop the coal burn­ing

Ana­cos­tia — com­bined sew­er over­flows affect the riv­er, with raw sewage dumped into rivers when it rains (same for Potomac, actu­al­ly, but the Ana­cos­tia gets most of the atten­tion)

Unknown loca­tion — government/military nuclear research reac­tor some­where in the city

City-wide — water flu­o­ri­da­tion — tox­ic waste being added to the water, pre­tend­ing it’s good for teeth (it’s not), but makes the lead in water prob­lem worse and dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly affects black and His­pan­ic res­i­dents in terms of lead expo­sure

City-wide — ener­gy pol­i­cy — DC’s renew­able ener­gy law sup­ports many pol­lut­ing tech­nolo­gies, like the burn­ing of bio­mass, black liquor (tox­ic paper mill waste) and tox­ic land­fill gas­es.  The city gets it nor­mal pow­er from coal, nuclear and gas in the region, which is also a prob­lem.  A new gas-fired pow­er plant to serve the region is tar­get­ing the black com­mu­ni­ty of Brandy­wine, MD in south­ern Prince George’s Coun­ty.  Also, frack­ing for nat­ur­al gas is threat­en­ing the George Wash­ing­ton Nation­al For­est, which could con­t­a­m­i­nate DC’s drink­ing water.

City-wide — waste pol­i­cy — The largest recip­i­ent of DC waste is the trash incin­er­a­tor in the com­mu­ni­ty of col­or in Lor­ton, VA (Fair­fax Coun­ty).  The city, as part of its Sus­tain­able DC pro­gram, is con­duct­ing a $300,000 study of waste man­age­ment options, with a heavy focus on “waste-to-ener­gy” (incin­er­a­tion).  See our arti­cle on DC’s Waste and Envi­ron­men­tal Racism

To get involved, con­tact Mike Ewall.