On Tuesday, October 15, the Baltimore County Council held a hearing on a proposed new contract to keep incinerating County trash at the BRESCO trash incinerator in Baltimore City. Read more from WYPR and the Baltimore Sun.
The County's current 6-year contract, signed in 2020, ends this year. The new proposed contract - details of which were only released to the public on Tuesday - spans 10 years, keeping the County incinerating its waste until 2036. The Council is scheduled to vote on this contract on Tuesday 9/22.
Trash incinerators are massive polluters. They emit more greenhouse gas emissions per unit of electricity produced than any other power source, even coal plants. New research released this year found that just four of the many types of pollutants (PM, NOx, SO2, CO) released by BRESCO cause $54 million worth of health damages across our region, and much of that cost is borne by Baltimore County residents, although the greatest damages are borne by residents of South Baltimore already overburdened by pollution. Shipping our waste out of the County to be incinerated in Baltimore City is wrong.
Building systems to reduce, recycle, and compost our waste is a better alternative, but locking Baltimore County into a long ten-year contract will hinder the progress we need to make. Send the County Council and County Executive a message: don't lock us in to trash incineration!
