By Adam Pagnucco.
On Tuesday, the county council followed months of debate with a 6-5 vote in favor of keeping the county’s incinerator open. The Banner described the vote on the incinerator as “ending years of debate over whether to close it.”
Really? I’m not so sure.
First, let’s discuss the vote itself. On deck for Tuesday were two competing resolutions introduced by Council President Natali Fani-González. One stated the council’s support for keeping the incinerator open and refurbishing it. The other stated the council’s support for closing it and “transitioning to the disposal of the County’s solid waste at out-of-county landfills.” Six council members voted to keep the incinerator open: Fani-González, Shebra Evans, Evan Glass, Sidney Katz, Dawn Luedtke and Kate Stewart. The five council members who voted no were Marilyn Balcombe (whose district includes the incinerator), Andrew Friedson, Will Jawando, Kristin Mink and Laurie-Anne Sayles.
Each side made a case worth considering. There are costs associated with either option: refurbishment on the capital side and additional long-haul costs on the operating side. There are environmental problems with incinerator emissions on one side and landfill and trucking emissions on the other side. The tie breaker may have been the logistical problems of replacing the current rail-based waste shipping system from the Shady Grove Transfer Station to the incinerator with a huge volume of long haul trucking out of Shady Grove. The Rockville City Council elaborated at length about this issue in its letter to the county council, which can be downloaded below.
Montgomery-County-Solid-Waste-Letter-101226
Fani-González deserves credit for attempting to settle this issue now. Big decisions only happen with deadlines, and her calling the question forced her colleagues to deal with an issue that none enjoyed. And the issue will stay settled for a little while. The next shoe to drop will be a capital budget item for incinerator refurbishment. It won’t appear in January’s amended capital budget, which will be Jawando’s first as the new county executive. The earliest that it could appear is in January 2028, when it could be included in the regular capital budget and its associated fees would appear in the following spring’s operating budget. (More on these fees below.) Fani-González bought the council at least a year and a half of time. They should be grateful.
However, there are two related wild cards.
First, there will be a new county executive and a new county council seated in a month. The new executive (Jawando) voted to close the incinerator. Of the six returning council members, three (Fani-González, Luedtke and Stewart) voted to keep the incinerator open and three (Balcombe, Mink and Sayles) voted to close it. They will be joined by Marc Elrich, who asked the council to close the incinerator during his time as executive. The four other new council members (Jud Ashman, Scott Goldberg, Karla Silvestre and Julie Yang) have not yet voted on this issue, although Ashman did sign a letter as the Mayor of Gaithersburg expressing the city’s support for keeping the incinerator open.
Second, refurbishing the incinerator will be expensive but the exact cost is still unknown. An October 27 staff memo stated that the county estimated its cost at $356 million while the incinerator’s operator claimed a cheaper retrofit might cost $200 million or less. Staff wrote, “Actual costs will not be known until the scope of a future capital project is finalized and a construction contract is awarded.” With perhaps two years or more until a contract is awarded, what will the cost be?
That same memo contains a hint. Refurbishment costs will be financed with bonds backed by the county’s solid waste charges, which are collected through property tax bills. Right now, the charge increases from FY27 through FY33 are projected to be 25-127% using the incinerator’s estimated $356 million refurbishment cost. If the cost goes up, how much more will the fees rise?
All of this introduces a bit of unpredictability for the many stakeholders on this issue. Additionally, I am reminded of a dictum that was ancient when I began working at the county council: no council can bind a future council.
The future awaits.