Communities Nationwide Push to Close Their Incinerators. Sullivan County Wants to Build a New One.

On Monday evening, about a hundred people filled the Black Library for a community town hall on Sullivan County’s waste-to-energy plant proposal. Annette Foy, a Sullivan County resident, was among the attendees with a clear message for the county: “We say no to the incinerator.”

While communities from Connecticut to Oregon have shuttered their incinerators, Sullivan County legislators are exploring how to build a new one – if built, it would be the first new incinerator to break ground in the United States in over a decade. Residents and activists strongly opposed the proposal at the Sept. 29 meeting in Monticello.

“We don’t want to die from the air we breathe,” said Foy. “Other counties are running away from this idea. Why is Sullivan County so into it?”

In June, Sullivan County issued a draft Request for Proposal (RFP) for the development of a waste-to-energy facility as part of its long-term sustainability goals. It’s detailed in the county’s recently approved local solid waste management plan , which estimates the facility to cost about $146.1 million.

Monday’s emergency town hall was organized by local environmental and racial justice groups, including Sustainable Sullivan, Sullivan County’s NAACP, The Black Library, and the Energy Justice Network. Speakers urged attendees to scrutinize the health, environmental, and financial risks that come with the incinerator proposal.

Waste-to-energy incinerators create energy by mass burning trash to generate heat and electricity. But pediatrician Dr. Steven Goldstein warns it’s the ash emissions left behind the plant and invisible to the naked eye that could have serious health implications.

“These tiny particles can be absorbed into the body from the lungs or intestinal tract and then go into the bloodstream,” said Goldstein. The incinerator’s two forms of ash, fly ash and bottom ash, are often linked to serious health risks, he adds. “Not only heart and lung disease but also an increased risk of dementia in all age groups.”

Sullivan County’s Division of Public Works Commissioner Ed McAndrew told Radio Catskill that legislators will review all environmental health impacts if the proposal moves forward.

“It will be reviewed in detail, in [deep] scrutiny with New York State DEC, and I’m sure the EPA has air emission standards that may apply to it as well on any emissions,” said McAndrew.

Legislators are exploring the former closed landfill in Monticello as a potential site, he says, but that doesn’t mean the DEC would permit it there. McAndrew notes that the approval process would be “extensive and rigorous” if there were a viable vendor and site location.

The county’s Public Works Committee is currently reviewing comments submitted from the draft RFP and anticipates issuing a final RFP later in the fall.

Solution or setback for the county’s trash problem?

Sullivan County District 5 Legislator Cat Scott said that at first, the idea of building a new facility to manage the county’s garbage sounded appealing: Sullivan County currently trucks its trash up to the Seneca Meadows landfill three hours away, but that contract will expire at the end of 2025. Tipping fees for both residents and haulers have jumped. And county legislators are desperately looking for ways to boost the local economy.

“It sounded good, right? We’re gonna get rid of this trash, which is a really expensive problem to have, and we’re gonna make some energy with it,” said Scott, who chairs Sullivan County’s Health and Human Services Committee.

It wasn’t until members of the grassroots environmental group Sustainable Sullivan started speaking out at county legislative meetings, urging legislators to reconsider the plan.

Scott says that’s when she learned about the health risks often associated with communities living near incinerators: poor air quality, higher rates of respiratory illnesses, and climate threats like crop damage and extreme weather conditions.

“This incinerator is a fairytale… but it is a fairytale that some people have latched onto,” she said.

Low-income communities and communities of color are disproportionately impacted by incinerators. Alasha Santiago, Vice President of Sullivan County’s NAACP, said Sullivan County chose Monticello as a potential location due to its large Black population.

According to the Energy Justice Network , trash incinerators in majority BIPOC communities were twice as large as those in majority white communities. Monticello has already been designated by New York State as a ‘Disadvantaged Community,’ meaning area residents are disproportionately affected by climate change, pollution exposures, and historical disinvestment and discrimination.

“We cannot let corporate greed and political power exploit our community,” said Santiago. “We have to take a stand on this inequality because our lives depend on it.”

This is not the first time Sullivan County has considered an incinerator in Monticello, says long-time resident Vivian Ginsberg.

In the 1990s, medical waste company Stericycle tried to build an incinerator in Sullivan County. Environmental activists fought back against the proposal, and the idea was eventually abandoned. Ginsberg worries that “the current legislators are not studying history.”

A long history of mismanagement and closures

Mike Ewall is the founder and director of the Energy Justice Network, a national network fighting dirty energy facilities for more than two decades. During Monday’s town hall, he says he has helped many communities fight back against incinerator proposals and win.

Reworld, formerly known as Covanta, is one waste vendor that has expressed interest in building an incinerator in Sullivan County. But Ewall warns that the New Jersey-based company has a long backlog of permit violations , environmental fines , and lawsuits in communities where it has facilities.

In February, New York State’s Department of Environmental Conservation slapped Reworld with $878,500 in enforcement penalties and environmental benefit fines for mishandling its Long Island facility’s ash for years. Those fines aren’t enough to spark change, Ewall says, and often equate to just a few days of Reworld’s tipping fee revenues.

“[Reworld] make[s] that back in less than a week. You’re not harming them. They are not changing their behavior.”

Some communities have even gone bankrupt after building incinerators. In 2011, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, filed for Chapter 9 bankruptcy after building a facility that left the city with more than $280 million in debt. Incinerators often have a ‘put or pay’ clause, or a contract obligation where a community is required to feed an agreed-upon amount of waste or pay the difference.

But there’s hope the tide will turn. Communities from Los Angeles to Delaware County, Pennsylvania , have already adopted zero waste plans – a model that could steer Sullivan County in a new direction. With local elections coming up, attendees also urged that voting can be a tool to mobilize local leaders to respond to community needs.

“Remember: we vote them in and we can vote them out,” said Foy.

Image: Energy Justice Network’s Mike Ewall speaking at the September 29 Community Town Hall at the Black Library in Monticello (Photo Credit: Kimberly Izar)