By Karen Melton, Southeastern Pennsylvania Group
The northeast corridor of the U.S. has the biggest concentration of trash incinerators in the country with the Covanta plant in Chester, PA being both the largest and the one with the fewest pollution controls, according to Mike Ewall, Director of Energy Justice Network. Ewall spoke as part of a speaker series program in mid-May called “Incineration: Why Philly needs to stop sending our trash to Chester.”
A few other sobering statistics cited by Ewall in his presentation:
- Only 2% of the waste being burned at the Covanta plant comes from Chester, while 41% comes from Philadelphia.
- The plant is the #1 source of air pollution in Delaware County, one of the top air polluters in the seven-county southeast region of Pennsylvania, and the worst environmental violator of the many industrial plants in the area.
- Pennsylvania, with its 43 landfills and 6 incinerators, is the #1 trash importer in the U.S.
- Generating energy by burning trash produces even greater levels of carbon emissions and toxic pollutants than burning coal for an equivalent amount of energy, even when the trash is trucked over long distances.
A 2021 article in the newsletter of nearby Neumann University, located just five miles from the Covanta plant, spoke to another issue: “Along with all the environmental issues this incinerator presents, it also poses an ethical dilemma as well. According to the experts, over a century of systemic racism and political corruption has turned the city of Chester into one of the worst cases of environmental racism in the country. Incinerators and toxic companies target low-income areas and communities of color as they are seen as the path of least resistance”.
Indeed, asthma is rampant in Chester, and studies have documented that people living near incinerators have higher rates of cancers, respiratory and heart disease.
Another speaker at the May program was Zulene Mayfield, a resident of Chester and founder of Chester Residents Concerned for Quality Living (CRCQL). Mayfield has been on the frontlines fighting for clean air in Chester for so many years that she was featured in a 1996 documentary called ‘Laid to Waste’ about industrial pollution in her city. She spoke in May about the very tangible impacts of Covanta and other local industries -- odors, stinging eyes and throats, soot that accumulates daily on cars and porches, and elderly residents being told to stay indoors and keep their windows closed.
The last speaker of the evening was Eileen Flanagan, an author and activist leader with Earth Quaker Action Team (EQAT). She recently organized a week-long 40-mile walk starting in Chester and arriving on Earth Day at the headquarters of Vanguard, one of the world’s largest investment companies and a major funding source for Covanta and other polluting industries in the region. This campaign is working to convince Vanguard to divest from fossil fuels and polluting industries such as trash incineration.
There is also an ongoing campaign to convince area municipalities not to renew their incineration contracts with the Chester facility -- the next renewal for Philadelphia is coming up in summer of 2023. However, as Ewall explained, getting some contracts nixed can have the effect of creating capacity for other trash imports, and shutting down one incinerator can simply cause that trash to be shifted to a different plant. The whole system of waste management is what needs to be addressed, starting with much less waste. We as consumers have a key role to play in reducing that waste.
This blog was included as part of the June 2022 Sylvanian newsletter. Please click here to check out more articles from this edition!