After battling for years to stop Baltimore from burning municipal trash in the polluting BRESCO incinerator, city residents and environmental advocates thought they’d come up with a great way to pay for the “zero waste” measures needed to transition the city off of it.

The plan was to raise the “tipping fee” for large commercial haulers using the city’s Quarantine Road landfill that hadn’t been changed in 30 years, then use the proceeds to fund progress on their sustainability wish list.

Their list included new recycling facilities, curbside yard waste and food scrap collection, city composting capability, and other strategies that the city acknowledged – years ago – would move it away from the burning and burying of garbage.

This was one of the “asks” in the federal civil rights complaint that people living near the incinerator filed last year and that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) agreed to investigate.

To the residents’ delight, the strategy succeeded. Or so they thought when they learned that city was hiking its large-hauler fee, which would generate an estimated $8.4 million in new revenue.

“Our communities were so excited. We thought this Title VI complaint that we filed was actually doing something,” said Carlos Sanchez, a South Baltimore Community Land Trust youth leader from Lakeland, less than two miles from the BRESCO smokestack.

But the extra revenue isn’t funding new environmental programs, they discovered, upon review of Mayor Brandon Scott’s proposed fiscal 2026 budget. Instead, it is simply going into the General Fund.

“Not a single dollar is earmarked to stop the toxic cycle of burning and burying waste in our communities,” Sanchez said. “Using our complaint to raise revenue without addressing the underlying injustice is a betrayal of the very communities that Title VI was designed to protect.”

Advocates weren’t the only ones disappointed.

Comptroller Bill Henry faulted Scott’s budget for failing to address needs he called “important to our residents,” including zero waste.

“Our community libraries, our cultural institutions and the zero waste initiatives that DPW has been promising for years – and requested be included – were left out of the version before us today,” he said.

Henry’s rebuke came in a statement his office released last month to explain why he had taken the unusual step of abstaining, rather than approving, the mayor’s preliminary budget.

Council: Where’s the Funding?

Some City Council members also are unhappy about the pace of city investment in strategies to help Baltimore finally end its tortured relationship with BRESCO, whose towering smokestack is a familiar sight along Interstate 95.

The 8th District’s Paris Gray and the 4th District’s Mark Conway made their frustration known at the May 28 budget hearing for the Department of Public Works (DPW).

“I want to know what we’re doing in this budget to make progress on zero waste,” Conway said. “With the tipping fee revenue, you’d imagine that it’s going to zero waste or something to help with sustainability, but I’m not really seeing that.”

Council members had learned, at earlier briefings, about the funding drop-off and other facts, like the city’s waste diversion rate dropping from 18% to 16% between 2017 and 2024.

“What is the city’s plan to improve recycling and diversion rates without funding new infrastructure, community education or composting programs?” Gray asked. “And I ask that because there isn’t any money being allocated to those things.”

“What is the city’s plan to improve recycling and diversion rates without funding new infrastructure, community education or composting programs?”  – Councilman Paris Gray.

In response, DPW Director Khalil Zaied made two points, noting first that the higher tipping fee would slow the influx of commercial waste into the landfill.

“But what’s going to be the biggest impact for zero waste is really this study,” he said, pointing to a $600,000 review of alternatives to landfill expansion that was funded in last year’s budget.

“Everything is on the table,” he enthused, explaining that the study is looking at multiple ideas, including a pubic-private partnership to create a transfer station with machinery to separate trash from recycling.

South Baltimore residents and their advocates were not impressed by this long-term, capital-intensive approach.

“Neither of the things he talked about are zero waste,” said Jennifer Kunze, Maryland organizing director for Clean Water Action. “We’re not generating less waste by directing commercial waste away from the landfill or by shipping our waste off to some facility somewhere else.”

She noted that, in addition to the extra $8.4 million in tipping fee revenue, DPW is projected to end FY25 with a $6 million surplus.

The Scott budget raises questions about how much City Hall is committed to recycling beyond studies and soundbites.

Kunze and Sanchez say funding for zero waste capital projects in this budget, and recent ones, is also inadequate.

Without a ramp-up in funding for compost facilities, the city will have built only a fraction of the 78,300 tons-per-year composting capacity it will need by the end of the current contract with WIN Waste Innovations, the owner of BRESCO.

Kunze was asked about the timing of the Scott administration’s zero waste efforts following revelations about hazardous conditions for sanitation workers and the tragedy of two on-the-job deaths last year.

“Hiring new crews so that the routes are shorter and safer, doing facilities improvements – that’s super important, we absolutely support that,” she said. “But money for zero waste programs shouldn’t have to come out of that.”

She noted that the new budget’s allocation of $5 million for 15 new sanitation crews is only a portion of the 2025 surplus and tipping fee windfall.

No BRESCO Exit Strategy?

Pushing back at City Hall on the subject of timing, environmental groups and community leaders say years of inaction left city officials at a juncture where they now must take action.

If the city had been funding the zero waste initiatives set out in DPW’s own 2020 Less Waste Better Baltimore Master Plan, they argue, it wouldn’t be having to make hard choices today.

The plan mapped out ways for the city to reach a diversion rate of of 83% in 20 years – and how to get there faster by phasing in options more quickly and stepping up education and outreach.

With the city’s 10-year contract with then-incinerator operator Wheelabrator Technologies set to expire in 2021, advocates had been hopeful that Scott would keep his campaign promise and not renew the contract for another 10 years.

But Scott backtracked.

He told The Brew at the time that “under my administration, we’re going to work to not burn as much at the incinerator as possible. And I will work my butt off to make sure that this is the last time we ever give them a new contract.”

Then came his administration’s 10-Year Solid Waste Management Plan, another disappointment to incinerator foes because it signaled that the city wouldn’t be ditching the plant anytime soon.

• Pollution from BRESCO incinerator likely to continue through mid-2030s, DPW planning report says (4/27/23)

“Why don’t we have a concrete plan to get us off it?” demanded a Cherry Hill resident, who was recently diagnosed with asthma, at a 2023 meeting about the document. “Why is there no end game for this highly toxic incinerator?” asked another speaker.

(After his jurisdiction’s recent renewal of its trash incineration contract, Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich is facing similar criticism over unkept promises and failure to plan ahead.)

The stakes in Baltimore are particularly high, environmentalists say.

They contend that the BRESCO plant’s emissions of mercury, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides and fine particulate matter contribute to respiratory issues, heart conditions and other health problems for residents in nearby Westport, Mount Winans, Lakeland, Cherry Hill and elsewhere.

With five years to go now before the contract with current operator, WIN Waste Innovations, is up, Scott is being asked to make significant zero waste investments in this budget cycle before it’s too late.

There are signs he is feeling some heat.

“Making sure we further invest into DPW to do some things around composting,” was one of the administration priorities Scott noted during a recent appearance on WBAL-TV.

Falling Behind

A tense exchange during the budget hearing over $4 million for composting and other zero waste efforts requested by DPW – but not included in Scott’s budget – raised questions about how much City Hall is committed to recycling beyond studies and soundbites.

To the advocates, creating curbside food scrap and yard waste collection and composting services is something the city should have started years ago.

“Baltimore is the only place in the region that’s still incinerating yard waste and Christmas trees. If that doesn’t tell you that that we’re falling behind I don’t know what does,” Sanchez pointed out, noting the following:

• Anne Arundel, Baltimore, Howard and Montgomery counties all collect yard waste separately from trash and compost it.

• Food waste collection and composting programs have also been established or piloted by these jurisdictions.

• The Less Waste Better Baltimore plan estimates that the city is paying BRESCO’s operator over $2 million a year to burn 36,250 tons of yard waste – 11% of the total residential waste that DPW picks up.

At the May 28 hearing, council members wanted to know more about DPW’s “enhancement request” for $4 million to begin separate collection and composting of yard waste and establishing a pilot program for curbside collection of food scraps.

At a previous hearing, an agency staffer had confirmed the existence of the request – and the fact that the Scott administration had left it out of the FY26 budget. Councilman Conway wanted details.

“You’re not sharing that enhancement request, but I’d love to see exactly what was ironed out in the request. Can you share that in the next two days?”

No, he was told by Budget Director Laura Larsen. “We can summarize what was in the request but we’re not going to share the full request,” she said.

“We’re thinking about the issue, but we’re not doing anything about the issue”  – Councilman Mark Conway.

“Why?” Conway pressed.

“Because they are pre-decisional documents that the administration holds, and it’s under their purview in terms of what is shared from them,” she replied.

“This is a service the Scott administration wants to offer. But we want to be thoughtful and deliberative about it”  – CAO Faith Leach.

At this point City Administrative Officer Faith Leach stepped in, telling Conway “so this is what we’ll provide to you . . . the details, some of the details, a high-level summary.”

Conway persisted.

“You mentioned the prospect of doing a study,” he began. “That felt unsatisfying to me because we have the Less Waste Better Baltimore plan that has been already out there for five years.

“Doing an additional study didn’t quite scratch the itch of what we’re looking for, especially with the timeline with the 2030 expiration of the BRESCO contract,” he continued. “We’re thinking about the issue, but we’re not doing anything about the issue. And in order to do something about the issue we have to talk about the plans that we have on the table.”

Leach pushed back.

“This is a service the Scott administration wants to offer the citizens. But we want to be thoughtful and deliberative about how we put forward that service, and so this is what I’ll offer,” she replied, stating firmly that there will be no pilot program in September.

“Could we have a pilot by spring? Possibly. But I don’t want to commit until I understand the operational impact,” she said, still promising Conway only a summary.

“What we’re all working toward here,” Conway said as the exchange came to an end, “is we want to see real progress now and not in the ’27 budget.”