Reference Links

No Incinerator.org

Frederick WTE Site

10/18/10: No incinerator.org has a list of candidates who say they will kill the incinerator if elected.

6/22: The BoCC voted to move forward with the incinerator in the Adamstown region. 

6/10: Incinerator to move forward within a month - from the Frederick News Post: Jenkins to support incinerator; vote expected within month

5/24: Jenkins flip-flops: Trip to Pa. convinces Jenkins that Frederick should build incinerator. Three commissioners now say they are willing to move forward with trash-burning facility. See the Gazette Article.

4/28: Direct from the FNP article: The Frederick County Commissioners are suspending the bid process for building a new trash incinerator. The commissioners voted 4-1 today to suspend bidding and instead explore other disposal options, including expanding the landfill or burning Frederick County's trash at an existing incinerator outside the county.

4/26: Decision on the incinerator will occur on Tuesday April 28th. Get your comments (whatever they may be) to the BoCC BEFORE TUESDAY. See the County website for contact information for the commissioners.  CFIA Now's website has additional information including links to recent articles. I personally think this is a lousy idea and should be stopped for all of the environmental and health risk reasons - if these did not exist there would have been at least 1 of these facilities built in the US in the past 15 years.

4/20: Congress has currently excluded WTE from the Renewable Electric Standard (RES) for the same reasons that New York excluded it - known safety and environmental issues. The industry is lobbying hard to have it added.  If you are interested in this - please let your representatives know how you feel on this topic.

4/19: Clarified some statements. Commissioner Gardner has stated "This does not mean that I think Eastalco is the best location for a landfill. In fact, I would not consider Eastalco for a new landfill location."

3/13: Awareness Event on Saturday March 21st at the Westview Promenade. Citizens For Incinerator Alternatives Now wants to make sure everyone in the county is aware of the threat the Incinerator poses. They plan to distribute fliers and information to any and all that will listen. For those who are interested in doing more, they will have petitions to sign and mailing lists to join. See their new release for more information.

3/10: New York Renewable Energy Requirement EXCLUDES garbage incineration facilities citing 'incineration's documented threats to public health and the environment. ' Read the text of the announcement.

3/9: The Public Service Commission (PSC) received a letter from the Northeast Waste Authority (NEA) last year requesting an exemption from the Maryland Certificate of Public Convenience and Necessity (CPCN) process for the proposed $527 million Waste-to-Energy project. To me this is nothing more than a blatant attempt to bypass environmental processes and regulations put in place to protect us, the people behind the WTE (the Northeast Waste Authority (NEA)) are trying to skip the comprehensive process required to obtain a Maryland CPCN. See Lisa Baugher's flyer about this issue

3/7: Citizens For Incinerator Alternatives Now announces their arrival.  Visit their web site for more information.

3/4: Commissioners Gardner and Jenkins say they are investigating other options - but while the procurement of the incinerator continues.  This looks to me like a basic smoke screen.  Give the opponents something to distract them.

2/28: Per the Frederick News Post Senator Mooney is working to get legislation passed that will prohibit this facility from being placed at the McKinney site. It looks like this will also eliminate the Tamko site - which will leave the EastAlco site as the only alternative.

2/17: Here is some more information provided by Commissioner Hagen. Here is a Reuters article about Maryland not taking action against pollution violations including "the Wheelabrator Incinerator in Baltimore". Yes, this is the same company that our BoCC is engaged in discussions with for our possible incinerator and it looks like we cannot count on our State to properly monitor the facility either.

2/13: The county removed from consideration the site at the end of New Design Road (PE site).

Bad News: The incinerator is coming to the Adamstown area. In my opinion this is a foregone conclusion. The BoCC has made up their minds and are just going through the formalities of the public meetings.

The 3 remaining potential locations for the WTE (incinerator) are all in the Adamstown region.  We will get to not only live with the pollution, but the trucks bringing in 1,500 TONS of trash each and every day.  Depending on the location selected those roads may include coming down 85, New Design and 15.  The worst location for the traffic is definitely one of the remaining backup sites - the EastAlco site would be worse from a traffic perspective - all those trucks on Manor Woods road...

Oh, and in response emails the BoCC president - Jan Gardner - is stating that if they don't build this, they will need to consider siting a new landfill and that people involved in the debate are stating that EastAlco is the place for it but they have to condemn the land to get it. She personally is against using Eastalco as the new landfill location. "This does not mean that I think Eastalco is the best location for a landfill. In fact, I would not consider Eastalco for a new landfill location."

The site the BoCC asked for comments about is McKinney just North of Buckeystown.  Still pollution, but at least closer to main highways. 

There is a ton of reading material - and when you read through it you will see that they totally ignored the traffic issue, nor do they propose putting a pollution monitoring station(s) anywhere - especially schools which the state required of Sempra when they were granted their approval to build the power station.

One thing that I find interesting. When Sempra was trying to get Frederick County to allow them to use the treated waste water.  The County delayed any decisions citing technical, permitting and ultimate responsibility issues. One of those was consumptive water use and the impact of COMAR 26 / 17 / 07 which basically says that non-residential water appropriation permits require low flow augmentation water storage in a reservoir. The incinerator is definitely a non-residential use, and an additional consumptive use of water may well jeopardize our relationship with the downstream water users which was a concern with the Sempra project. Also cited was that the responsibility for these issues would fall to the County because it was our permit being affected - which will be the same here. The company you have build and operate the plant will not ultimately be responsible - the County will. See the entire Sempra based report. I have been told that a study was completed that says that there is sufficient waste water available for this use and even another large user, but I have not seen the analysis myself.