Chester to Philadelphia: ‘Find somewhere else’ to send your trash

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Wind buffeted lawmakers and staff from Philadelphia’s City Council on Friday as they stood between the Delaware River and the Reworld waste-to-energy facility in Chester, which burns thousands of tons of Philadelphia’s trash each year.

Mike Ewall, director of the advocacy organization Energy Justice Network, told the group to be grateful for the gusts of air coming off the water.

“The only reason you’re not sick … to your stomach is because the wind is protecting us from the odors being noticeable,” Ewall said.

The group visited the incinerator as part of a tour of Chester’s Delaware River waterfront organized by Jamie Gauthier, Philadelphia’s District 3 councilmember, to promote a bill that would prevent the city from sending its trash to be burned in Chester.

She hoped to show other council members the concentration of industrial facilities — including Reworld, an oil refinery, a sewage treatment plant that burns sewage sludge and a power plant — that pollute the air around Chester and cut off residents’ access to the river.

“Seeing it really put it into perspective for me,” Gauthier said Thursday, before the tour. “It’s about the incinerator, but it’s also about the injustice of all of these other cumulative impacts that no community should have to put up with.”

Philadelphia Councilmember Kendra Brooks and staff from the offices of Councilmembers Jeffery Young, Anthony Phillips, Nicolas O’Rourke, Michael Driscoll and Council President Kenyatta Johnson joined Friday’s tour.

Bill would stop Philadelphia’s trash from being burned in Chester

Gauthier’s bill would prevent Philadelphia from signing new contracts with waste disposal companies for trash incineration. The city’s contracts with Reworld, formerly Covanta, and WM, formerly Waste Management — expire this summer, according to Gauthier’s office.

“Now is the time to do the right thing on this issue,” Gauthier said during the tour.

As of 2018, roughly 40% of Philadelphia’s trash was burned, according to the city’s latest waste management plan. The majority of incinerated waste went to Reworld’s Chester facility, but smaller amounts were burned in Morrisville, Conshohocken, York and Marietta, Pennsylvania.

The rest of Philadelphia’s waste is currently buried in landfills. If the bill passes, the city would likely send all of its waste to landfills.

Gauthier’s bill is scheduled to be heard in committee later this month.

Chester mayor: ‘Find somewhere else’

Chester Mayor Stefan Roots wants Philadelphia’s trash out of his city. He said roughly a third of the waste burned at the incinerator in Chester comes from Philadelphia.

“If you guys can choose to find somewhere else, we’d love it,” Roots told tour attendees.

Trash burned at the incinerator also comes from Delaware County and New York City, Roots said.

“It’s an old technology, and it’s time for it to go — especially in the community like Chester that’s looking to develop,” Roots said. “It’s one of our biggest impediments.”

Concerns about pollution and health

The Reworld facility releases several pollutants that make asthma and other respiratory conditions worse. Reworld says its emissions are below government standards, although the facility has received violations in recent years.

Zulene Mayfield, chairperson of the advocacy group Chester Residents Concerned for Quality Living, noted that this happens in a county where air quality exceeds standards for particulate and ozone pollution. 

“Eventually, you feel it,” Mayfield said. “Our children here feel it. A lot of our children here in the city have asthma. We now have a high rate of adult asthma. You have 70-year-old people becoming asthmatic.”

Mayfield’s organization wants to see it shut down.

Charges of environmental racism

Critics like Gauthier have framed Philadelphia sending its trash to be burned in Chester as environmental racism. More than 70% of Chester residents are Black and close to a third live in poverty.

Chester residents have to “put up with toxic uses like the incinerator, in my opinion, for no other reason than they’re a poor, Black city and thought to not have the power to fight back,” Gauthier said.

Reworld says incineration is more ‘sustainable’ than landfilling

Reworld frames its incinerators as a sustainable alternative to landfilling. The Chester facility produces enough electricity to power 52,000 homes, recovers metals for recycling and diverts waste from landfills, according to the company. Reworld says the diversion of waste from landfills, which release planet-warming methane, ultimately reduces emissions of greenhouse gases.

Ewall, from Energy Justice Network, contests this, pointing to the Delaware County Zero Waste plan, which found the climate “costs” of incinerating 1 ton of the county’s waste at the Covanta facility to be greater than disposing of that ton at a landfill in the state.

Reworld says it contributes to the Chester community by supporting student scholarships and neighborhood cleanups.

“We are proud to be an active part of the Chester community,” said Reworld spokesperson Linda Ribakusky in an emailed statement.