The Montgomery County Council voted 6-5 Tuesday to keep the Dickerson trash incinerator open.
Council President Natali Fani-González and County Executive Marc Elrich will hold separate media briefings Tuesday afternoon to discuss the vote.
Councilmembers were deciding between keeping the incinerator open and upgrading it, or closing the incinerator and hauling trash on trucks to a landfill outside of the county.
Council President Fani-González, and Councilmembers Shebra Evans, Evan Glass, Sidney Katz, Dawn Luedtke, Kate Stewart voted in favor of keeping the incinerator open.
Council Vice President Marilyn Balcombe and Councilmembers Andrew Friedson, Will Jawando, Kristin Mink, Laurie-Anne Sayles voted to close the incinerator.
The incinerator, operating since 1995, will need renovations due to aging infrastructure. The current contract for its use expires in five years in April 2031.
Currently, trash is sent from the Shady Grove Transfer Station via train to the incinerator, and then the ash is taken by train to a landfill in Virginia.
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Council President’s remarks
“For me it was the trucking, sending 80 trucks a day to another state,” Fani-González said during her media briefing after the vote, as she explained why she voted to keep the incinerator open instead of long-hauling trash to a landfill outside of the county.
Trucking trash out-of-county would require 80 loads per day, which means 40 tractor-trailers each making two trips from the Shady Grove Transfer Station.
“Sending our trash to a landfill, that’s an environmental issue,” Fani-González said. She noted landfills generate methane, a greenhouse gas.
She added, “Sending our trash to another state where we have no control — tomorrow Virginia can say I don’t want to take more trash from Montgomery County or the state of Maryland or anybody, and then we’re left in limbo.”
County Executive’s remarks
County Executive Elrich, who has urged the council to close the incinerator, said he was disappointed in the council’s decision. He noted the resolution that was voted on is “nonbinding.”
“I believe that as the new council gets more information, they’ll be open to charting a better, more economically viable and environmental path,” he said.
That new council will include Elrich, who is set to become a county councilmember, according to unofficial voting results from the general election. Jawando, who voted in the minority to close the incinerator, is poised to be the next county executive.
Elrich clarified that his plan after closing the incinerator was not to truck all the trash. Rather, he wants to implement an enhanced trash sorting facility called Advanced Waste Processing (AWP), and then haul the remaining trash on trucks to a landfill outside of the county.
He responded to concerns from Fani-González, including her concern about methane from landfills: “The RFP [request for proposals] requires that the landfills we would send it to have to have methane capture.” He added, “We were going to be able to manage the methane and the council president’s concern would have been addressed, probably if she had read it.”
