Who Burns in Chester?
Reworld/Covanta incinerator -chester, pa
Meet the largest trash incinerator in the United States.
The Reworld Incinerator, formally named Covanta and Delaware Valley Resource Recovery Facility, is located in Chester, PA and is the largest trash incinerator in the United States.
The incinerator burns over 1.2 million tons of garbage per year, processing up to 3,500 tons of waste per day 1. Built by Westinghouse in 1991 and operated by Covanta since 1997, this trash incinerator is the biggest polluter in Chester and the biggest polluter in Delaware County. Chester has become the dumping ground for the region and CRCQL is working to change that!
Less than 2% of the trash burned at Reworld is from Chester. About 30% comes from Delaware County, 30% from Philadelphia, 20% from NYC (Queens + Manhattan), and the remainder is from other neighboring states.
Reworld operates 36 total incinerators nationally. Their incinerator in Chester has the least pollution controls when compared to trash incinerators nationally, despite being the largest.
Chester City, Pennsylvania is located in Delaware County, small city south of Philadelphia and is the oldest city in the state. The city spans 6.1 square miles with 34,000 residents, while being home to the largest trash incinerator in the country, a sewage treatment facility and sludge incinerator (DELCORA), Kimberly Clarke manufacturing, Evonik & PQ Chemical companies, and other polluting industries. Over the years, Chester has been threatened with a pet crematory, medical waste incinerator, and a soil remediation incinerator, which were prevented due to CRCQL organizing and residential opposition.
Over a century of systemic racism and political corruption has transformed the historic waterfront city on the Delaware River into a toxic regional waste hub and is referred to as one of the worst cases of environmental racism in the United States.
Polluting industries have led to devastating consequences on the community health and quality of life for the majority low-income black and brown community that lives in Chester. Polluters target low-income areas and communities of color because they are seen as the path of least resistance.
How Does Incineration Pollute?
Facilities like the Reworld/Covanta burn the trash inside combustion chambers and misleadingly call the process “trash-to-steam”, “resource recovery”, or “waste-to-energy” to make it sound “green”. Burning all that trash releases large amounts of several pollutants, including nitrogen oxides (NO x ), sulfur dioxide (SO 2 ), lead, and particulate matter (PM2.5), which are tiny particles a fraction of the width of a human hair, and overall very little energy. In fact, incineration is the most polluting way to make energy, even worse than coal. A New York Department of Conservation study found that the state’s incinerators emit up to 14 times more mercury as coal-fired power plants per unit of energy2.
Air pollution from these sources are linked with respiratory illnesses like asthma, and puts individuals at higher risk for diseases, including cancer, heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and others. It also makes viruses like Covid-19 more dangerous. Children in Chester have asthma rates 5x the national average. (2010 census data from The Asthma Program, PA Dept. of Health- Data provided by Pennsylvania Health Care Cost Containment Council).
30% of the burned material becomes toxic ash which is then hauled to Rolling Hills landfill in Berks County, increasing hazards of leachate and making landfills more dangerous.
Chester residents are paying for the region’s trash problems with their lives.
What Can We Do?
CRCQL’s founding in 1992 marked the beginning of our fight against the incinerator’s pollution of our neighborhoods. Over the past 30+ years, we have been focused on driving Reworld out for the sake of our community’s health and well-being.
BAN THE BURN is an initiative that predominantly focuses on shutting down the Reworld Incinerator. For now, this means diverting waste from the incinerator to landfills, which as lower health and environmental costs. However, CRCQL believes in a Zero Waste society, where waste is not produced at all.
CRCQL’s work has resulted in significant strides. Most recently, Delaware County has agreed to divert a quarter million tons of trash from Reworld to Berks County landfill. Further, the result of our work can be seen in Reworld’s rebranding from Covanta; this is a clear and blatant attempt to greenwash their polluting reputation.
See the documentary “Laid to Waste” below to learn about the initial fights in the 1990s.
Resources
- Solid Waste Disposal Information – PA.GOV: https://cedatareporting.pa.gov/reports/powerbi/Public/DEP/WM/PBI/Solid_Waste_Disposal_Information
- GAIA – Incinerator Myths vs. Facts: https://www.no-burn.org/wp-content/uploads/Incinerator_Myths_vs_Facts-Feb2012.pdf
