Why Are We Against Incineration?
Conflicts of Interest
Read numerous e-mails directed to the Northeast Maryland Waste Disposal Authority and Frederick and Carroll County commissioners re: Robin Davidov's bias. Robin Davidov is the executive director of the NMWDA and has been lobbying around the world in support of incineration. The NMWDA will not only own the Frederick County incinerator but will also receive a kickback of $490,710.00 the first year of operation and in subsequent years, these kickbacks increase 3% per year!
In short:
- The NMWDA owns the facility.
- The NNMWDA carries none of the financial risk. (That is solely the responsibility of Frederick and Carroll Counties.)
- The NMWDA has no responsibility for the daily operations. (For $20M/yr. Wheelabrator operates the facility and charges for all additional maintenance, upgrades, "extraordinary expenses", retrofits, etc.)
- The NMWDA gets about half of a million dollars per year to deposit into their coffers.
Do we wonder why the NMWDA thinks its incinerator is a good solution for Frederick and Carroll Counties? For the citizens, or for the NMWDA?
“Trust Us” Is Not Good Enough
Not all waste authorities are created equal, and most do not recommend incineration.
Wheelabrator Technologies Inc. is the vendor selected to build the incinerator. According to a document obtained by Caroline Eader, a proponent of non-incineration alternatives, Wheelabrator and its subsidiaries have been involved in more than 522 legal actions. While some of these actions aren’t directly against their incineration activities, the fact that they refuse to disclose aspects of their business such as fines for health and safety violations (one of which occurred in Baltimore) is cause for concern. If Wheelabrator isn’t willing to be open and honest with the public now, what assurances do we have that they will be at a later time.
Phillip Schmidt-Pathmann, Executive VP of Green Conversion Systems described Wheelabrator as,
“not using the best available technology…[Wheelabrator] has no record of high material recovery.”
The 2006 report entitled Incinerators in Disguise presents case studies of modern incinerators and how they are “sold” to communities:
- Companies are likely to claim that their machines produce no pollution, which is impossible.
- Government officials often exempt these machines from laws requiring environmental assessments.
- Some companies sell machines with which they have no experience, although they may claim otherwise.
- Companies may describe their machines as successes even after their machines have failed to operate properly during multi-year tests and have been permanently shut down and abandoned.
- Building a waste-to-energy incinerator is for money and political "gain."
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