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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.
