{"id":364197,"date":"2025-11-08T09:25:12","date_gmt":"2025-11-08T09:25:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/364197\/"},"modified":"2025-11-08T09:25:12","modified_gmt":"2025-11-08T09:25:12","slug":"chester-trash-incinerator-philly-council-staff-visit-facility","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/364197\/","title":{"rendered":"Chester trash incinerator: Philly Council staff visit facility"},"content":{"rendered":"

This story is part of the WHYY News Climate Desk<\/strong><\/a>, bringing you news and solutions for our changing region.\n<\/p>\n

From the Poconos to the Jersey Shore to the mouth of the Delaware Bay, what do you want to know about climate change? What would you like us to cover? Get in touch<\/strong><\/a>.\n<\/p>\n

Wind buffeted lawmakers and staff from Philadelphia\u2019s City Council on Friday as they stood between the Delaware River and the Reworld waste-to-energy facility in Chester, which burns thousands of tons of Philadelphia\u2019s trash each year.\n<\/p>\n

Mike Ewall, director of the advocacy organization Energy Justice Network<\/a>, told the group to be grateful for the gusts of air coming off the water.\n <\/p>\n

\u201cThe only reason you\u2019re not sick \u2026 to your stomach is because the wind is protecting us from the odors being noticeable,\u201d Ewall said.\n<\/p>\n

The group visited the incinerator as part of a tour of Chester\u2019s Delaware River waterfront organized by Jamie Gauthier, Philadelphia\u2019s District 3 councilmember, to promote a bill that would prevent the city<\/a> from sending its trash to be burned in Chester.\n<\/p>\n

She hoped to show other council members the concentration of industrial facilities \u2014 including Reworld, an oil refinery<\/a>, a sewage treatment plant that burns sewage sludge<\/a> and a power plant<\/a> \u2014 that pollute the air around Chester and cut off residents\u2019 access to the river.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cSeeing it really put it into perspective for me,\u201d Gauthier said Thursday, before the tour. \u201cIt\u2019s about the incinerator, but it\u2019s also about the injustice of all of these other cumulative impacts that no community should have to put up with.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

Philadelphia Councilmember Kendra Brooks and staff from the offices of Councilmembers Jeffery Young, Anthony Phillips, Nicolas O\u2019Rourke, Michael Driscoll and Council President Kenyatta Johnson joined Friday\u2019s tour.\n<\/p>\n

Bill would stop Philadelphia\u2019s trash from being burned in Chester<\/p>\n

Gauthier\u2019s bill would prevent Philadelphia from signing new contracts with waste disposal companies for trash incineration. The city\u2019s contracts with Reworld, formerly Covanta, and WM, formerly Waste Management \u2014 expire this summer, according to Gauthier\u2019s office.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cNow is the time to do the right thing on this issue,\u201d Gauthier said during the tour.\n<\/p>\n

As of 2018, roughly 40% of Philadelphia\u2019s trash was burned, according to the city\u2019s latest waste management plan.<\/a> The majority of incinerated waste went to Reworld\u2019s Chester facility, but smaller amounts were burned in Morrisville, Conshohocken, York and Marietta, Pennsylvania.\n<\/p>\n

The rest of Philadelphia\u2019s waste is currently buried in landfills. If the bill passes, the city would likely send all of its waste to landfills.\n<\/p>\n

Gauthier\u2019s bill is scheduled to be heard in committee<\/a> later this month.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This story is part of the WHYY News Climate Desk, bringing you news and solutions for our changing…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":364198,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5132],"tags":[5229,54878,176397,857,90941,1448,2830,1311,67,586,132,5230,68,2969,49740],"class_list":{"0":"post-364197","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-philadelphia","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-chester","10":"tag-covanta","11":"tag-environmental-impact","12":"tag-environmental-regulations","13":"tag-pa","14":"tag-pennsylvania","15":"tag-philadelphia","16":"tag-united-states","17":"tag-united-states-of-america","18":"tag-unitedstates","19":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","20":"tag-us","21":"tag-usa","22":"tag-whyy-news-climate-desk"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115513362247304776","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364197","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=364197"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364197\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/364198"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=364197"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=364197"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=364197"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}