To the editor: 

Last month, Sullivan County’s Purchasing Department issued its final Request For Proposal (RFP) — a formal document soliciting vendors to submit bids — for a so-called “waste to energy facility,” which some legislators maintain is the best way to solve the county’s waste-management problems. 

With luck, no “waste to energy” companies will respond to the RFP, and the incinerator will quietly die on the vine. But we can’t count on that — especially given some concerning details included in the proposal. 

“Purpose of this RFP [is] to provide a regional approach to waste.” 

That is, the county intends to allow the incinerator company to import waste from neighboring counties. In fact, it would have to, because Sullivan currently collects less than 100,000 tons of municipal solid waste (MSW) and construction & demolition debris (CD) annually.

But building an incinerator is expensive. To make sure it’s profitable, any company that builds a new incinerator today is looking to burn at least 500,000 tons — and more likely 1 million tons — of trash per year.

This means that 80% to 90% of the trash burned in the facility would come from outside Sullivan. Setting aside the very real issue of hazardous emissions for now, just think about all the truck traffic (and resulting air pollution, congestion, and roadway wear and tear) this would create. 

“The Sullivan County IDA is available to work with the selected developer with regard to the purchase or lease of land and with regard to potential financing for the developer’s construction of the proposed facility.” 

Potential incentives specified in the RFP include “the ability to issue taxable and tax exempt industrial development bonds, a partial exemption from real property taxes (through negotiated Payment In Lieu Of Taxes [PILOT] agreements), a sales tax waiver on material and equipment used in the construction or reconstruction of buildings, and a mortgage recording tax waiver.” 

This means the county would give tax breaks to a polluting facility which, over the long term, will damage our health, our roads, our environment, our agriculture, and our tourism-based economy by burning mostly other people’s trash. 

“The facility/project description should provide … the proposed process, including the … quantity of ash to be disposed of based on the proposed size of the facility.”

The ash collected from the bottom of the burners may well, and the smokestack scrubbers certainly will, contain hazardous materials, rendering the ash toxic. Where will the ash be disposed of? The RFP fails to raise, let alone address, this all-important question. 

The amount of insurance required is woefully insufficient. 

The insurance coverage laid out in the RFP requires a total of only $5 million of commercial general liability insurance and $1 million for each occurrence. This amount would have been inadequate for the “waste to energy” facility in Doral, Fla. that caught fire in 2023 and burned for nearly three weeks. The city, which assumed ownership of the facility once its contract with the company ended, is now liable for $7.8 million in financial losses. 

An incinerator would require a consistent supply of trash to burn, actively discouraging waste reduction. 

Yet waste minimization is the path we — both Sullivan County and society as a whole —should be taking. We need to rethink/redesign, refuse, reduce, reuse, repair, recycle, and compost more, not less. But an incinerator would demand precisely the opposite, continuing to fuel the linear “make–take–waste” economic paradigm we have today. 

We understand the appeal of a techno-fix, which would require the least change on everybody’s part. However, there is a credible alternative to burning garbage — one that centers on recovering materials rather than disposing of them. Major building blocks of such a strategy could be implemented within a few years and halve the county’s waste at a fraction of the cost — and without the pollution.

But as we work on better alternatives, it remains critically important to stop the incinerator. The most effective way to let elected officials know your views is to express them at public meetings.

To that end, we urge you to attend meetings of the County Legislature, particularly its Public Works Committee, along with meetings of the Thompson town board and the Monticello board of trustees. All three have a public comment period where citizens can state their concerns — an ideal opportunity to let elected officials know where you stand. View the complete calendar.

If enough of us keep raising our voices, elected officials will get the message. But we need to make our point loud and clear: Sullivan County deserves a better fate than to become the region’s trash incinerator.

 Toward a more sustainable future,

Caroline Baillie, 

Rebekah Creshkoff, 

and Eric Feinblatt

Sustainable Sullivan

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