Sullivan County Community Groups Call Emergency Town Hall on Waste-to-Energy Proposal

Sullivan County may build a waste-to-energy facility that some critics say is a ‘public relations term’ for an incinerator. Local residents are pushing back.

A coalition of environmental and racial justice groups including Sustainable Sullivan, Sullivan County NAACP, The Black Library, and Energy Justice Network will host an emergency town hall on Sept. 29 to discuss the proposed facility in Monticello, N.Y.

In August, the Sullivan County legislature approved its first solid waste management plan in more than three decades. It outlined how the county hopes to manage its trash moving forward, from enforcing stronger recycling protocols to building a ‘waste-to-energy’ facility.

The legislature has taken big steps to consider this as a viable option. Earlier this summer, Sullivan County issued a draft RFP for “the development of a Waste to Energy (WTE) facility as a component of their long-term sustainability initiative.” The county’s Division of Public Works also hosted prospective vendors at a site visit at the Monticello transfer station in July and visited Reworld’s Hempstead plant in Long Island, one of the waste management vendors who has expressed interest.

Mike Ewall, founder and director of the environmental advocacy nonprofit Energy Justice Network , says that these facilities can have profoundly negative impacts on the communities they are built in.

“It’s not the steam that gets you. It’s all the other really tiny stuff invisible to the eye, like mercury, lead, dioxin, hydrochloric acid, stuff that contributes to cancers, birth effects, learning disabilities, heart attacks, stroke, asthma. You can go down the list of almost every health effect that could be caused by chemical[s], and you will find those chemicals coming out of these smokestacks,” said Ewall, one of the speakers at the upcoming town hall.

He’s also worried that prospective vendors like Reworld have a history of operational mismanagement. New York State Department of Environmental Conservation issued $878,500 in enforcement and environmental benefit fines against Reworld Hempstead in February.

The state report found that the facility mismanaged its ash from 2006 to 2014 and failed to comply with its DEC-approved ash residue plans.

Ewall hopes that the upcoming town hall will be a space for local residents to voice concerns, gather information, and ask questions.

“We will make sure people have the information they need and understand why hundreds of other communities fought and protected their communities from this industry,” he said.

While the Sullivan County legislature approved the solid waste management plan, Communications Director Dan Hust previously told Radio Catskill that final approval for a facility is a separate process.

The event will host a lineup of speakers Alasha Santiago of the Sullivan County NAACP; Sullivan County District 5 Legislator Cat Scott; Dr. Steven Goldstein, pediatrician and environmental health expert; and Mike Ewall of Energy Justice Network.

The Sullivan County Legislature did not respond to Radio Catskill’s request for comment before the publication of this article.

Correction: Dr. Steven Goldstein’s title was updated to not reflect any institutional affiliation.

Image: The Reworld Hempstead (formally Covanta Hempstead) waste-to-energy plant in Uniondale, New York in 2021. Sullivan County Legislators visited the Hempstead plant in June 2024 to assess it as a model for Sullivan’s waste disposal needs, (Credit: Antony-22, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons)