Prince George’s County is courting “waste-to-energy” (WTE) corporations to build new waste facilities that will pollute our community. Currently our trash goes to the Brown Station Sanitary Landfill in Upper Marlboro, which is scheduled to fill up and close in 5 years at current dumping rates. The County’s Department of the Environment is moving toward contracting with waste corporations to build one of these types of facilities in the county:
- Incineration, using polluting, expensive and experimental gasification technologies unlikely to work
- Trash-to-ethanol schemes (also expensive, experimental and unlikely to work)
- Refuse-derived fuel (RDF) – compacting trash into pellets (probably in Upper Marlboro, near the state’s only sewage sludge incinerator), to incinerate them in existing burners, like the Chalk Point coal plant in Eagle Harbor, or the heating plants at Andrews Air Force Base or UMD-College Park (cheaper and highly polluting)
- Trash composting schemes, aiming to make garbage into (contaminated) fertilizer to dump on our agricultural lands
Just as in Baltimore, Energy Answers’ waste-to-energy scheme is also being considered for Prince George’s County! We need to pressure the County to consider implementing a Zero Waste Solution that does not include burning of waste! A Zero Waste solution means rejecting “waste-to-energy” schemes and diverting waste from landfills by reducing, reusing, recycling and composting materials. This can reduce the waste stream by over 90% if done properly.
If you or your organization wants to work together to demand the County holds public hearings before vendors are selected, please email us or call 301–836-1405.
