For years, community members have pressed Maryland officials to help them obtain samples they could independently test to evaluate the public health impact of the ash generated by Baltimore’s privately-run trash-burning incinerator.

Every year, about 140,000 tons of ash removed from the BRESCO facility in South Baltimore is trucked through town to the city-run Quarantine Road Landfill south of Curtis Bay.

In 2025, the Maryland Department of the Environment (MDE) promised to assist community leaders with precisely the sampling plan they  wanted.

But on the day it was to be carried out, a top MDE official reneged on the offer.

Documents obtained by The Brew show that an agreement was reached to provide community members and university experts access to ash from the incinerator operated by New Hampshire-based WIN Waste Innovations (formerly Wheelabrator).

• Part 1: Citing toxic ash, residents again call for the BRESCO incinerator to be shut down (10/5/26)

Researchers from Johns Hopkins, University of Maryland Baltimore County and other participants were trading emails about logistics with MDE officials that day.

One of the researchers got as far as the MDE headquarters parking lot on Washington Boulevard when she and the rest of the group received an email with this sudden about-face:

“We regret to inform you that the ash sampling plan needs to be postponed at this time,” MDE’s Solid Waste Program Administrator Oluwaseun Akinlotan wrote to Bonita Salmerón and Christopher Heaney, of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and other participants.

(What the state had agreed to was “split sampling,” a confirmation technique in which multiple samples are collected from the same location at the same time and then sent to separate labs.)

“We recognize the significant effort you and your team have invested in this, and regret any inconvenience this may cause,” Akinlotan wrote to Heaney, promising the agency would “be back in touch soon.”

After that, it was clear that MDE’s interest, for some reason, had plummeted and the testing plan died, according to Greg Sawtell, of the South Baltimore Community Land Trust.

“No samples have been made available to date,” he told The Brew.

MDE never responded to subsequent ash-related information requests, Sawtell also said.

Community members had asked for sampling and analysis plans for incinerator ash from WIN Waste’s BRESCO facility and the soon to be shut down medical waste incinerator run by Curtis Bay Energy.

They also had requested MDE’s risk assessment for the practice of using the ash (rather than soil) as an “Alternative Daily Cover” at the landfill.

Last week and again yesterday The Brew asked MDE why it dropped the 2025 sampling plan and has not provided other information sought by residents.

The agency has not yet provided a response.

UPDATE: Shortly after publication, MDE released a statement saying the agency had cancelled the sampling plan because it did not have the proper proper legal authority.

“We researched what we are able to do under the legally binding permits for these facilities,” MDE spokesman Jay Apperson wrote. “We do not have the legal authority to gather samples for purposes of providing them to a third party for testing.”

The agency is now offering to “facilitate a voluntary agreement between the parties” and is working with Senate President Ferguson and others “to evaluate the options for addressing the community’s concerns,” he wrote.

[See below for the full MDE response.]

Blowing Ash Impacts?

The potential health-harming qualities of incinerator ash have concerned residents and activists in Maryland and beyond for years.

As with residents’ concern about the impact of coal dust, after the 2021 explosion at the CSX coal terminal in Curtis Bay, community leaders have wanted more information about incinerator ash exposure and fault MDE for failing to help them get it.

Independent sampling and other key information, they argue, could help answer urgent questions, including:

• Whether the Baltimore Department of Public Works handles ash safely at the sprawling Quarantine Road Landfill?

• What routes the ash-laden trucks take through city neighborhoods to get there and whether their loads are always covered?

• How much dioxin and other health-harming substances known to be in incinerator ash are released along the way?

“Roughly 44% of the landfill is ash, and its toxic mix is currently unknown,” the Chesapeake Bay Foundation noted in a May 21, 2026 statement amplifying community groups’ concerns, noting that the material “can escape during the transportation and handling process and be released as fugitive dust.”

Potentially directly impacted neighborhoods, the statement said, include Brooklyn, Cherry Hill, Curtis Bay, Lakeland, Westport and Mt. Winans.

In 2017, BRESCO produced more than 143,000 tons of ash that went to the Quarantine Road Landfill, according to a DPW report.

“Roughly 44% of the landfill is ash, and its toxic mix is currently unknown”  – Chesapeake Bay Foundation.

Residents’ concerns about pollution releases from BRESCO’s tall emissions stack have attracted attention for years, but their worries about the effects of blowing ash on residents and DPW workers have somewhat flown under the radar.

“These trucks are on roads not far from Ravens Stadium and right next to the Horseshoe Casino,” Sawtell said. “Workers and citizens using the Quarantine landfill may have no idea when they’re unloading their pick-up trucks that they’re standing right next to blowing incinerator ash.”

In June, he sent an email to Maryland Senate President Bill Ferguson (whose district includes the incinerator and the landfill) describing last year’s sampling plan incident and complaining of being ghosted by MDE.

Protests Against Permit Renewal

Last Thursday, speaker after speaker protested MDE’s handling of the ash issue at a hearing held on renewal of BRESCO ‘s Title V air pollution permit.

Without independent sampling access and access to key documents, several speakers said, the permit renewal process is “not legitimate.”

“Without the sample, how can we test it?” asked Shashawnda Campbell, South Baltimore Community Land Trust’s environmental justice director. “How can we actually know the severity of what is happening to our health?”

A WIN Waste representative described the ash as “non-hazardous and non-toxic,” an assertion Sawtell challenged with a 2014 MDE document that showed agency staff thought otherwise.

“I have great concerns as a parent and also as a scientist”  – Dr. Chris Heaney, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Also speaking at the packed hearing was Hopkins epidemiologist Heaney, who alluded to the 2025 sampling plan that was abruptly dropped.

“I would encourage MDE to exercise its right to provide split samples of the ash for independent testing and verification, which we have been fully prepared to do,” Heaney said.

“I have great concerns as a parent and also as a scientist about the histories in other communities that have been dealing with incinerators and the accumulation of dioxin,” he continued. “Not just through the permitted, regulated air emissions, but also the ash.”
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UPDATE

Brew questions and MDE’s responses provided after publication:

BB: According to South Baltimore Community Land Trust and Community of Curtis Bay Association: A request was made in April 2025 to MDE to facilitate incinerator ash sampling (from BRESCO and the medical waste incinerator) so that the community could conduct independent analysis. MDE agreed to do this but – on the day when this was supposed to happen ( in August 2025) – the community was abruptly told by MDE the agency was NOT going to do it. No samples have been made available to the community to date. Why did MDE cancel?

MDE: Our staff has worked tirelessly to be available and responsive to the community. Last week, we brokered an agreement to stop incineration at Curtis Bay Energy. Last year, we required CSX Transportation to add a barrier to coal dust leaving the facility as part of the operating permit for the coal terminal. We have added opportunities for public comment and partnered with citizen scientists to analyze the impacts of pollution on neighborhoods.

In this case, after a constituent requested we make ash available for independent testing, we researched what we are able to do under the legally binding permits for these facilities. We do not have the legal authority to gather samples for purposes of providing them to a third party for testing. We have offered to facilitate a voluntary agreement between the parties here, and remain willing to assist with the establishment of such a relationship. We are working with local leaders in the area, including Senate President Bill Furguson, to evaluate the options for addressing the community’s concerns.

BB: MDE has not replied to requests for copies of its Ash Sampling and Analysis plans for the two facilities. Why?

MDE: Please see the attached Ash Sampling Plan and Analysis for Wheelabrator. The permit for Curtis Bay Energy varies slightly from the permit for Wheelabrator, in that the CBE permit never included the provision for submission of a Sampling and Analysis Plan. However, procedures for the analysis of ash from CBE is included in Part III D of the facility Refuse Disposal Permit (also attached).

BB: An MDE scope of work was provided to the community indicating that there were plans for a risk assessment regarding the use of BRESCO incinerator ash as Alternative Daily Cover (ADC) at Quarantine Road Landfill (QRL). But MDE has not replied to requests to provide that risk assessment. Is this correct? Please provide The Brew with that risk assessment.

MDE: No such assessment has been conducted, and any assessment would have been Baltimore City’s responsibility. Because the city is no longer permitted to use ash as ADC, we do not anticipate such a risk assessment to be conducted in the future.