Incinerator

Even as towns across America expand recycling programs to meet the demands of increasingly green-minded residents, Ocean City is going against the wave. Its final pickup of cans, bottles and paper from homes and businesses will be next week. Up to three-quarters of the nation now has access to curbside pickup, according to environmental and government groups. But the tourist town is grappling with another national trend: budget troubles. The move will save Ocean City an estimated $1 million in the 2010-2011 fiscal year.

Landfills, waste incinerators, sewage treatment plants, airports and any number of other industrial strength operations that feature loud noises, strong smells and other unseemly characteristics have two key things in common: everyone agrees they're needed, and everyone agrees they should be somewhere else. For a proposed trash transfer station in the works for Harford County, somewhere else for everyone except people living near the intersection of Routes 7 and 152 in Joppa is the site once known as Coleman Plecker's World of Golf.

About 20 protesters delivered a cardboard black coffin to the steps of City Hall yesterday, complaining that the mayor had failed to stop medical waste from outside the state from being burned at a new Hawkins Point incinerator."

The owner of the trash incinerator in South Baltimore has paid a $77,500 penalty to the state for failure to control emissions of toxic mercury into the air. Wheelabrator Baltimore L.P. agreed to pay to settle allegations by the Maryland Department of the Environment and the attorney general's office that its Baltimore Refuse Energy Systems Co. waste-to-energy plant on Russell Street near the stadiums had violated air pollution...

Incinerators and recycling have been part of the American waste-management system since the late 1800s. The nation's first garbage incinerator was built on Governor's Island in New York in 1885. The nation's first rubbish-sorting plant for recycling was organized in New York City in 1898. Not until 1930 did New York City and Fresno, Calif., experiment with sanitary landfill technology.This time line provides some perspective on Baltimore City's current debate over incinerators. Not only is burning garbage an essential element of any comprehensive waste management system, it is one of its cornerstones.

A Hawkins Point incinerator should be shut down for violating zoninglaws by accepting out-of-state medical waste, a Baltimore zoning board ruled Monday.The Board of Municipal and Zoning Appeals denied Medical Waste Associates a permit to operate the $26 million plant until the company complies with a zoning ordinance that limits it to burning hospital refuse from the city, Anne Arundel, Baltimore and Harford counties.Jervis Finney, an attorney for Medical Waste, argued at a June 4 hearing that the limitation is invalid because it restricts interstate commerce.

A citizen panel studying Anne Arundel County's future trash disposal alternatives has recommended construction of a waste-to-energy incinerator, either in the county, or jointly with a neighboring jurisdiction.The incinerator was the centerpiece of a set of recommendations the committee presented yesterday to County Executive Robert R. Neall. The other recommendations included encouraging more recycling of trash and construction debris, composting and regular disposal of household hazardous waste.

When the Baltimore City Council imposed a five-year moratorium on further incinerator construction, few could have anticipated that the emotionally charged issue would be revived so soon. But here is the City Council -- just two years later -- again pondering the explosive question.The reason is a proposal by the aging Pulaski incinerator's owner, Willard Hackerman. He wants to replace the East Baltimore facility's five polluting furnaces with a new $300 million waste-to-energy plant at no cost to the city.

A garbage drop-off station in Carroll County would be more economical than an incinerator, a representative of one of the country's largest developers of waste-to-energy plants said yesterday.Haulers would deposit trash at the station, and the trash would be transported out of county to a waste-to-energy plant, said John E. Joyner, a business developer at Ogden Projects Inc. of Fairfield, N.J.The county does not generate enough garbage per day to operate an incinerator, he said. Carroll generates about 300 tons per day; at least 500 tons would be needed.

The proposed rebuilding of Baltimore's environmentally troubled Pulaski Highway incinerator could be an "answer to a prayer" for Howard County's trash disposal problems, County Executive Charles I. Ecker says.Although the city is only two years into a five-year incinerator construction moratorium, an agreement backed by Baltimore Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke and made public last week would allow the Pulaski Co. to remain on its Baltimore property and try to build a new facility.The company has said it wants to replace the 38-year-old plant with a $200 million regional incinerator, the kind of facility that Howard County officials were hoping would become available -- outside the county.

I am responding to the recent letter by William F. Brandes ("O'Malley right on waste incinerators," Oct. 24) concerning The Sun's editorial on incinerators and the Environmental Integrity Project report on waste-to-energy (WTE) incinerators ("Clean power or dirty air?" Oct. 17). Mr. Brandes complains that our report on the environmental and energy impacts of waste-to-energy incinerators rests on biased data. The renewable energy portfolio is supposed to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels and the pollution they create.

The Sun's recent editorial on incinerators ("Clean power or dirty air?" Oct. 17). implies that an environmental group's recent report on waste-to-energy (WTE) incinerators exposes new data that Maryland's governor should have utilized to decide not to raise WTE to a Tier 1 renewable energy source. I disagree. The release of this report does not change the landscape of the debate. The report itself merely represents one advocacy group's cherry-picked analysis of a complex issue.

It's less than two months into the school year, and Gov. Martin O'Malley's grades have already slipped a little. He was marked down last week to a B+ from his usual glowing environmental marks by the Maryland League of Conservation Voters, largely on one issue: his failure to slow the proliferation of waste-to-energy incinerators in the state. That may seem a relatively minor matter, but a new report by the Environmental Integrity Project, a nonprofit advocacy group, provides ample evidence to the contrary.

The former site of a waste incinerator in Northeast Baltimore could be developed into a big-box store or warehouses or a combination under a plan being proposed by construction magnate Willard Hackerman, who has a contract to purchase the vacant, 19-acre site on Pulaski Highway from the city for more than $1 million. Hackerman, president and chief executive of the Whiting-Turner Contracting Co., has asked the city to designate the 6709 Pulaski Highway parcel a planned unit development, which would allow him to proceed with one of three scenarios.

Jay Hancock 's recent column ("This waste-to-energy plant could be model for Md.," Sept. 11) leaves a false impression that the Energy Answers (EA) incinerator project planned for Baltimore is a worthy, benign renewable energy project. Children in the Brooklyn, Curtis Bay, and Hawkins Point communities will be endangered by this project. The negative health impacts associated with incinerator pollution include asthma, bronchitis, developmental delays and nerve damage. A 2008 study revealed that children living within three miles of incinerator sites were twice as likely to be diagnosed with childhood cancer.

Columnist Jay Hancock 's effort to take another journalistic swipe at BGE and Constellation Energy leaves the impression that the Energy Answers incinerator planned for Baltimore City is a benign, renewable energy project worth Marylanders' support ("This waste-to-energy plant could be a model for Md. " Sept. 11). In fact, the Energy Answers incinerator would generate only a marginal amount of electricity - at best 160 megawatts - while burning at least 4,000 tons of waste matter a day, primarily ground-up tires, vinyl, plastic, wood and municipal waste.

Environmental groups have argued that emissions and ash from a proposed municipal trash incinerator in Montgomery County would pose a health and environmental hazard.A hearing began in Rockville yesterday on whether the waste-to-energy facility should be built in rural Dickerson.Attorneys for the Audubon Naturalist Society and for two citizens' groups, including the Sugarloaf Citizens Association, are challenging the state's decision to allow the 1,800-ton-a-day facility be built.Lawyers for the county, for the Maryland Department of the Environment and for the Northeast Maryland Waste Disposal Authority countered that local and state officials had decided properly that risks to the public from the incinerator were not significant.

A Carroll County citizens committee that has spent 14 months studying ways to dispose of trash will recommend that the county not build a waste-to-energy incinerator.None of the 13 members who attended yesterday's meeting of the waste-to-energy study committee spoke out in favor of a local incinerator. However, a majority favored taking county trash to a transfer station where it might be hauled to an incinerator outside the county.Three opposed having county trash go to any incinerator.The committee reached consensus agreement on incineration and other solid waste disposal options so a five-member subcommittee can start writing a formal report to the county commissioners.

A growing coalition of environmentalists, public health advocates and sustainable businesses including renewable energy companies and composters are urging Gov. Martin O'Malley to veto legislation that would qualify trash incineration as a "Tier 1" renewable energy source on par with solar and wind - and rightly so. The bill on Mr. O'Malley's desk would be disastrous for advancing the state's top waste-management priorities - reduce, reuse and...

Virtually every major environmental group in the state is urging Gov. Martin O'Malley to veto a bill that would classify waste-to-energy incinerators as a "Tier 1" renewable resource, on par with wind and solar power, but the governor has yet to commit to either signing or rejecting it. On the surface, it sounds absurd that burning trash would be considered on the same level with truly nonpolluting energy sources, but the question becomes more complicated...