Montgomery County officials are finding there are limited alternatives to continuing to operate the county’s Dickerson incinerator to handle solid waste disposal – even as the clock ticks on a five-year contract extension with the facility’s operator and concerns grow over environmental impacts such as air pollution.

“The stakes are really important, and they’re high,” County Councilmember and Transportation and Environment Committee Chair Evan Glass (D-At-large) said during a July 22 council briefing in Rockville on the future of the incinerator.

The county is looking for a more sustainable option to the incinerator at its Resource Recovery Facility at 21204 Martinsburg Road, which can contribute to harmful air quality as it converts waste to energy, according to county officials.

The incinerator has processed approximately 600,000 tons per year of the county’s waste since 1995, according to county documents. It includes three water wall furnaces that are each capable of processing 600 tons of waste per day. The heat of combustion is captured and concentrated to generate steam that spins a turbine generator, according to county documents. That energy can be converted into electricity. However, approximately 26% of the waste that is burned becomes ash, according to Glass.

The facility also processes recycling, and according to county officials, recycling rates in the county are increasing, and the amount of waste collected is decreasing. The county has a 45% recycling rate, outpacing the national recycling rate of 32%, according to officials.

According to Glass, the incinerator burned more than 540,000 tons of waste in 2020, “including significant amounts of construction and demolition debris, which is particularly toxic and polluting.”

In November, the county government extended its contract with private contractor Reworld Montgomery for trash incinerator services at its Dickerson facility until 2031, but announced it is planning to move toward a more environmentally friendly option.

“We do have the option here in the county to significantly increase waste diversion and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by adding advanced waste processing technologies into our system,” Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) Director Jon Monger said during the July 22 briefing. “[But] the process for doing that will include significant capital costs and will also take time to implement.”

DEP officials said that following an in-depth assessment, the options for handling the county’s trash are limited. The two options suggested that could be put in place before the April 1, 2031, end of the contract extension are “long-haul” transportation to an out-of-county landfill or procurement of a new contract for operating the county’s Resource Recovery Facility. This is due to the time it would take to implement other technologies, according to DEP officials.

“There’s no silver bullet here. No system is going to be flawless, and there are trade-offs involved with both systems, whether we’re talking about long-haul or whether we’re talking about the Resource Recovery Facility,” Monger said.

Councilmember Marilyn Balcombe (D-Dist. 2), who represents the district where the incinerator is located, said the issue of what to do about the incinerator is particularly important to her because of the air quality concerns in her community. However, she said she doesn’t want to outsource those problems to another community.

“This is a 30-year decision or more … we really need to think about whether that community [the county is sending trash to] has a voice in this decision,” Balcombe said. “The idea of shipping our trash someplace else is a very big decision, and I don’t think anyone here is going to take that decision likely.”

Some councilmembers expressed frustration during the briefing, saying they felt pressured to make a speedy decision earlier this year on the future of the county’s waste disposal while faced with limited options. The council is weighing both temporary options to implement following the end of the current contract, or implementing long-term options that would either close the incinerator for good or enter a longer contract.

“It felt like we were backed against the wall, absolutely no choices here, we have to make a decision for the next 30 years, and we have to do it now, and there are no other options,” councilmember Andrew Friedson (D-Dist. 1) said.

Extension offered time to plan

The short-term contract extension with Reworld Montgomery allows the county to explore new options while ensuring the acceptance, transfer, processing and disposal of mixed solid waste generated in the county until April 2031, according to Monger. The contract includes an option for early termination by the county. 

The company currently collects the county’s waste and combusts up to 600 tons of waste per day in its furnaces. The Washington Post reported in June that the county may need to spend more than $57 million over four years on incinerator maintenance.

Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich (D) has touted climate change and environmental sustainability as some of his top concerns, pledging during his 2018 and 2022 campaigns to end the county’s use of the incinerator. But he defended the contract extension in November, saying county officials needed more time to assess options.

“This extension allows us the time needed to evaluate and implement the best available new technologies that will help us transition to a more sustainable future while ensuring that we maintain the safe, efficient operation of our waste management system in the interim,” Elrich said in a press release announcing the contract extension in November.

DEP officials are exploring the use of new technologies that would allow the closure of the Resource Recovery Facility, increasing efficiency and minimizing the volume of waste in disposal processes. The county is also implementing artificial intelligence technology, such as advanced optical sorters, in its recycling processes that will make it easier to identify materials that can be sold as commodities, according to Monger.

One new technology is Materials Recovery and Biological Treatment, or MRBT, which separates materials and extracts them for further disposal, including biodegradation of trash that contains biological elements, such as food waste. This process aims to recover as many materials as possible from solid waste to limit what must go into a landfill, according to a National Institutes of Health (NIH) report.

However, according to DEP officials, MRBT would be a large project with significant capital costs and would take five to six years to fully implement.

During deliberations over the county’s fiscal year 2026 budget earlier this year, the council rejected Elrich’s recommended Capital Improvement Program amendment to begin pre-construction work for a new MRBT facility, citing the fact that councilmembers had not been briefed on the process or its alternatives.

DEP officials said the department is issuing a request for proposals for contractors that could carry out the option of long-hauling trash to a landfill after the extension ends, and will brief the council prior to making decisions. The council will have the option of approving a contract during the fiscal year 2027 budget process in May 2026.

One point of contention during the July 22 briefing was the county’s practice of delivering some trash that is not incinerated to a landfill in a low-income community in Henrico County, Virginia. Additional use of out-of-county landfills was one idea proposed by DEP officials, due to a lack of capacity on county land for additional landfills and to provide time in the short term for the county to implement MRBT and other trash disposal technologies. However, several councilmembers disagreed with the idea.

“I will never agree on dumping our trash somewhere else, no matter how you frame it, no matter how much analysis you’re going to make,” councilmember Natali Fani-González (D-Dist. 6) said. “There’s no way that I will agree on dumping our trash in another jurisdiction, especially when Montgomery County has this pride of being ahead in the nation on climate justice.”