Covanta Is Not Passing the Smell Test in Delco
The Covanta trash to steam plant in Chester. Photo provided by Stefan Roots.
Back in February 2021, my small campaign team argued about which issues facing Chester residents are the most important. The usual hot button issues are trash collection, litter, and crime. We realized that the bigger issues facing Chester right now are the Covanta plant and receivership. Having nothing to lose, we campaigned on erasing environmental racism and fixing the city’s finances—to the chagrin of a few on our team who thought it was an uphill battle to get residents excited about those issues.
What a difference a few months can make. Even though trash collection and crime still dominate the day-to-day conversation around town, we’ve done an amazing job raising awareness about Chester’s environmental struggles by partnering with the environmental justice advocates who have been fighting this fight for decades. We’ve also helped many people understand the complexities of receivership and the role of our receiver and his team as they trudge through the muck and mire of city finances to find a way for Chester to right its financial ship and return to good health.
We are also finally seeing a breakthrough in the increasing support from the county council and from a lot of people throughout Delaware County, for addressing the Covanta issue. Several municipalities have voted no on continuing to send their trash to Chester to burn. The county council is starting to take a stand on the issue. And many people from around the county and beyond are responding to the environmental activist community—by participating in Zoom calls, demonstrations, and letter writing campaigns, and by attending lectures, presentations, and their local municipal council meetings.
I provided a public comment at the county council’s meeting last week, letting them know to look out for Chester folks who will be coming out and voicing their opinions and demands. And during the second round of public comments, there were already a few Chester folks doing just that.
According to a recent Delaware County Daily Times article about that county council meeting:
“All of our efforts of economic development will not succeed if Covanta is still there,” Councilwoman Elaine Paul Schaefer said to audience applause at Wednesday’s county council meeting. “We can have fancy, multi-use development envisioned for that coastline and investors are going to continue to turn away because of Covanta.”
Schaefer’s observation about investors suggests that there have been lost opportunities for development on the Chester waterfront because businesses keep running away, not wanting to locate themselves near a smelly trash incinerator.
The article continues:
“Covanta itself took issue with the claims of being an economic detractor…[saying that it] most definitely does not deter businesses from communities, in fact they can be an attraction. In Europe, waste-to-energy facilities have been the preferred method over landfills and have been integrated into major population centers, such as Paris. In Copenhagen, they even built a ski slope on top of their waste- to-energy facility for recreation.”
Somehow, the idea of Covanta as an attraction to business is flying way over my head. If new businesses haven’t flocked to Chester’s waterfront by now, I don’t think Covanta’s attraction powers are working out well for Chester. And, let’s remind them, we’re talking about Chester, not Europe, Paris, or ski slopes in Denmark. We want to hear what they’re doing to make Chester better.
Covanta’s position, from the same article:
“[In] Niagara, N.Y., our facility has become a green anchor for the community, partnering with six businesses adjacent to our facility where we supply energy from the waste they generate and feed it back into their business. This is a true success story where we act as a utility for these businesses so that they can continue to be economic drivers in the region.”
But you can’t slide a few kilowatt hours to Chester homes? It would be nice to get a little break on our electric bill, seeing as up to 70,000 other homes are potentially powered by the trash burned in Chester. If plugging the electricity they generate into the grid for others to use is the best you can do for Chester, you’re really not helping us. If we were treated like the businesses in Niagara, you might have a little more support from Chester folks.
Covanta also wants to tell us that the Chester facility operates up to 99 percent below its federally regulated standards for emissions. That’s a tricky statement, because most of us don’t know how safe the federally regulated standards are. And they also don’t tell us how many hours during the year the Chester facility operates up to 99% below those standards. It seems to me that, if they did so 99% of the time, the feds would have realized by now that federal standards are way too conservative, and would be regulating pollution much more strictly.
There will apparently be a hearing in Harrisburg to consider renewing Covanta’s permit. There are several possibilities: It might be renewed as is. It might be made more — or less — stringent. Or it might not be renewed, putting them immediately out of business.
Covanta says that they recycle 50,000 tons of metal annually — as if that somehow helps Chester residents. They also pride themselves on employing 105 people, 46 percent of whom live within 10 miles of the plant (and yet fewer than eight Chester residents work there).
Chester folks who spoke at the county council meeting said:
“There has to be a human cost that’s attributed to this debate. It’s way too expensive at this point. We’re not willing to pay … costs with our lives … people are dying. People’s lives are being lost. We’re being polluted for other people’s comfort. We need to have a voice and we’re tired of other people making decisions that directly affect our lives. It’s like taxation without any representation. We’re asking for your help.”
One member of the county council replied:
“I really appreciate those of you standing up here for your community and your families and your neighbors and all those affected by the injustices of decades of systemic racism in Delaware County. Maybe there is a creative way in which this council can do more.”
The city of Chester receives approximately $5 million a year— about a tenth of its budget, from Covanta, as a hosting fee. I don’t know whether this hosting fee agreement has ever been renegotiated. To my knowledge, there aren’t incentives, penalties, or built-in periodic increases in the hosting fees to the city. Although every other cost goes up each year, I’ve never heard that the hosting fee Covanta pays the city has ever gone up.
Mayor Thaddeus Kirkland has said:
“Covanta has been both a good neighbor and a good partner to Chester. They have been, and continue to be, a part of our community for the long haul, serving the waste disposal needs of our community and many other communities, and is the preferred alternative to landfills, while providing important economic benefits to our city and the larger region.”
There’s not a lot of buy-in for those claims among Chester residents. From what I hear, Chester folks are tired of meeting the waste disposal needs of many other communities, and see it as time for some other municipality to carry the load for the next 30 years. Chester’s time is up in the trash business. It’s time to grow the city financially and help get our people healthy again.
What’s the response to this claim?:
“Covanta Delaware Valley and the rest of the plants in our fleet help municipalities and businesses achieve their sustainability goals to minimize waste to greenhouse gas producing landfills.”
We have complete confidence that you can move your plants elsewhere and continue doing the fine work you do. Chester does not want to be the final location for your trash incinerator.
“…not using the Covanta facility could result in higher costs and increased traffic…the only option is to send waste to other landfills, which would be contingent on space, and would likely result in increased costs…Another adverse effect would be increased truck traffic as we would replace the lost county waste with waste from further distances. Truck traffic would increase even more with the county sending its waste further distances to landfills.”
I don’t know about other municipalities, but people in Chester get hit with trash fee increases every year. We don’t have a problem sending our trash to landfills, just as Covanta doesn’t have a problem sending their ash to those same landfills.
I’m tired of hearing Covanta tell folks that truck traffic will increase somewhere else if trash goes to landfills. We want to hear the plan to decrease truck traffic in Chester.
Obviously, times are changing in the trash business. People all around are finally recognizing that Chester will never reach its full potential as long as trash is being burned on its waterfront. Common sense says that the value of Chester riverfront property would increase greatly if there weren’t a huge trash incinerator there.
Covanta—and the Chester city government, which supports Covanta—are grossly outnumbered by people in opposition to it, who object to the toll that the business takes on Chester and surrounding communities. Their talking points are not passing the smell test any longer.
Stefan Roots blogs at Chester Matters.
