Please fill out the form fields below to add your organization to this letter urging Rep. Paul Tonko and Rep. Frank Pallone to strengthen the CLEAN Future Act by removing the provision detailed in Title II, Subtitle A on page 39 of the bill which would allow incineration of post-consumer municipal waste to be considered a clean electricity source.
Although we appreciate the support of individuals, please note that we are collecting organizational signatures only for this effort. The deadline to add your organization to this letter is **Monday, March 29, 2021.**
Read the letter below or at:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1rnfJ_1yOrsxPvspo_h5FH5uYIh9bJoxhNhv_6NXBAqU/edit ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Representative Frank Pallone
2017 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
Representative Paul Tonko
2369 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
April 1, 2021
Re: Amendment Requested to the CLEAN Future Act
Dear Representative Pallone and Representative Tonko:
The undersigned organizations appreciate your efforts on the CLEAN Future Act to begin addressing the climate crisis.This bill includes many strong waste provisions that will help address the plastic pollution crisis. Specifically, we applaud the provisions pausing the permitting of new plastics production facilities, requiring essential environmental justice protections, and supporting a national bottle bill. However, we respectfully urge you to remove the provision detailed in Title II, Subtitle A on page 39 of the bill, which would allow incineration of post-consumer municipal waste to be considered a clean electricity source.
Garbage incineration a.k.a. “waste-to-energy” should not be considered a source of clean or renewable energy, because it is neither clean nor renewable. These facilities perpetuate environmental injustice, are costly to taxpayers and consumers, pollute the air and water, and pump large amounts of greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere. The bill’s provision that the E.P.A. has to certify the emissions does not provide any comfort as the E.P.A. regularly approves incinerators.
Waste-to-energy facilities perpetuate environmental injustice because they are almost always located in low-income communities of color and they release a host of toxic chemicals including dioxins, furans, mercury, lead, cadmium, hydrogen sulfide gas, and styrene, increase heavy vehicle traffic, and undercut waste reduction, recycling, and composting programs.
Representative Tonko’s district is painfully aware of how costly and difficult, if not impossible, these facilities are to regulate. Residents of Cohoes, NY have had their lives upended after learning that the Norlite incinerator, which is located next to a public housing complex, burned millions of pounds of waste containing PFAS. Norlite also had two spills resulting in open burns in under a year. Coeymans residents are fighting the LaFarge Cement Plant to prevent the burning of millions of tires next to the town’s public school. And in the City of Rensselaer, which is already burdened by the Dunn Construction & Debris Landfill, residents are sacrificing hours and hours of time to fend off a BioHiTech waste facility that would fill massive indoor pits, sited on top of a current hazardous waste landfill, with municipal waste, remove the paper and plastic from the waste, shred it, and sell it as fuel. The facility would greatly increase truck traffic and sits less than a mile from the Rensselaer Public Housing Complex. The common thread in the waste-to-fuel economy is the proximity to vulnerable populations and the passionate objections from the communities which these facilities impose upon.
Waste incineration issues in Representative Tonko’s district are not unique. Of the more than 8.4 billion tons of plastic produced since 1950, more than half which was produced in just the last ten years, 12% has been incinerated and that number is increasing as plastics accumulate in the waste stream and landfills become overwhelmed. Despite best practices for waste management, a third of plastic leaks into the environment. More than 15 million tons of plastic enter our oceans every year and microplastic loads in our drinking water are increasing as plastic pollution accumulates in our waterways.
The desire to make the plastic problem disappear from sight makes incineration an attractive option, particularly when paired with the illusion of a climate-friendly source of energy. However, when considered carefully, waste-to-energy does not create an incentive to reduce the upstream sources of plastic pollution and emissions. Rather, it entrenches an economy built on plastic waste and gives petrochemical companies an easy out to continue fracking and producing plastic at a break-neck pace with dire consequences for our climate.
Almost all plastic in the U.S. is made from ethane, a byproduct of hydraulic fracturing, and plastics manufacturing, which is expected to increase 40% by 2050, releases methane and other greenhouse gases at every step of production. According to a study published in the journal Nature Climate Change, the annual greenhouse gas emissions from plastics are nearly twice that of the entire aviation industry and exceed the emissions of the entire African continent. This fact is incompatible with avoiding catastrophic climate change, and the legislative goal of the CLEAN Future Act must consider reducing plastics’ emissions at the source.
Incinerating municipal waste does not eliminate the need for landfills. For every three pounds of garbage burned, one pound of toxic fly ash is produced. This ash contains concentrated heavy metals, dioxins, and furans, creating a new need for toxic ash dumps which become an added source of pollution for the communities that are burdened by them.
Permits, reports, and enforcement actions associated with incinerators are filled with quantitative data on emissions, limits, violations, and fines. But enter into any community burdened by an incinerator and you will see that the emotional and physical trauma of living near a major source of air pollution is not reflected in the regulatory documents. It is telling that residents of “Cancer Alley” in the petrochemical corridor of Louisiana are experiencing coronavirus deaths at five times the national average. Families who can’t afford to move are taxed to their mental limits with worries of what heavy metals may be doing to their children’s ability to learn, or whether their doctors will one day reveal the life-changing news of a systemic or rare disease.
Although we consider the CLEAN Future Act an important complement to the critical Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act, we urge you to strengthen it and preserve its integrity by removing any consideration of incineration as a clean energy source.
Sincerely,
