Westminster Common
Council Members Frazier and Whitson weigh-in on incinerator and airport
expansion
October 17, 2011
As a citizens of Westminster, we have
wondered why some elected officials of Westminster haven’t publicly weighed in
on issues that would have a large impact on Westminster. Now that we are elected Councilmen. we would
like to let our views be known on two issues that we believe will impact Westminster. Here are our observations and concerns.
The first is the “waste to energy”
incinerator that the county is currently thinking about building with Fredrick
County. We are against it for several reasons:
The first of which is the cost to run
it. There is a waste to energy incinerator in Montgomery County and every
family in the county is charged a fee of several hundred dollars a year to keep
it running. Do we need another fee in Carroll?
The incinerator also needs tremendous
amounts of trash to keep it running, and needs the paper, cardboard and plastic
that is and can be recycled to keep the operating temperatures high enough to
run efficiently. That means that the
paper cardboard and plastic that is currently being recycled in Carroll will be
burned and not reused.
This is a linear system and we live in
nature, which is a cyclical system. A linear system takes, makes, and wastes.
It takes things from the resource base and makes whatever we want to buy and
creates wastes along the way. Ultimately what is made is also thrown away and
in this case it will be burned. We should try to treat our resources like
nature in a close looped system. We need to reuse the paper, cardboard, plastic
and other “trash” instead of burning it.
There are technologies in place that
make this a more cost effective solution as well which have been recently
shared with us at Council meetings.
One final note that should put an
exclamation point on our reasoning is that the incinerator in Harrisburg is the
main reason for the city going bankrupt recently!!
The other issue that we are against that
is also being looked at is the airport expansion. I have not seen, read or
heard of any way that the airport expansion will benefit the people of
Westminster or Carroll County. If it
will not somehow positively impact the welfare of the people than why spend the
taxpayers money on it.
The present airport is continuously
operating at a loss with no reason to
think it will start to make a profit.
The present debt is 5 million dollars and counting!
The Federal government wants to invest
73 million in it and make it bigger, but after that we will be in charge of the
upkeep, which will cost us more money as well.
Marada,
which was one of the main reasons for the expansion, is out of business!
Businesses are less likely to come to
Maryland in general due to the heavy tax burden and our lower taxed neighbors.
If we accept Federal money,
they will give us more mandates in what is required for the airport and
have control, as opposed to local control, and we know how much money the
Federal gov’t has right now. – 14
trillion and counting. Don’t think
Carroll County is high on their priority list.
There are also environmental concerns relating to fuel being dropped on
local fields/noise/ as well as homes/land that people have lived on their whole
lives that would have to be condemned and forced to move elsewhere in these
difficult times.
There is no reason that a county
government should be running an airport in the first place. Governments are not good at being businesses
and shouldn’t try to be businesses.
4 of the 5 Commmisioners ran on a
platform that they were opposed to the airport expansion and they should keep
their word!
If a business were running an airport it
would be more efficient. In fact, we
would be making money as a county if they turned a profit because the private
company would be paying taxes. Since the
county runs the airport there is no tax revenue coming in from the airport!
When the county loses money, due to the airport losing money, We the People of
Carroll County lose!
Dennis Frazier and Paul Whitson ( 410
916 3645 )
Labels: Admin Letters to KevinDayhoffNet, Carroll Co Regional Airport, Enviro Solid Waste Man, Enviro Solid Waste to Energy, Letters to the Editor qv Admin Letters, People Frazier Dennis, People Whitson Paul
*****
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In a recent editorial, the Carroll County Times called on the County's Board of Commissioners to make a decision on whether or not to remain in a partnership with Frederick County to build a trash burning plant. The decision should be a straightforward one - besides the serious environmental risks that the plant poses as well as the inconceivable price tag that it comes with, several of the commissioners campaigned against the plant when they were running for office. It's time that they make true on their promise!
A recently released report details how the incinerator industry is pushing to make Maryland the East Coast's premiere destination for...other people's garbage! That should do wonders for our state's reputation. 
Like Carroll and Frederick Counties, citizens in the city of Vancouver, BC are also fighting plans to build a waste incinerator. As this recent article mentions, in addition to putting local governments into debt, degrading the surrounding environment, the smoke that incinerators release as they burn garbage poses a serious hazard to human health.
Lehigh Cement in Union Bridge has announced that they will start burning garbage in order to fuel their plant. They are doing their best to make sure that the processes that they will be using is as innocuous sounding as possible, calling the garbage "engineered fuel" and claiming that it is "cleaner, greener, and renewable" when compared to the coal that they currently burn to fuel the plant. Let's be clear about a few things, though: First, there is nothing clean, green, or renewable about burning garbage. The plastics and rubbers that they will likely be burning are only as renewable as the petroleum from which these products were derived. Second, this is a new process - Lehigh has no idea what kind of health effects this could have. Any claims otherwise are baseless.Third, Lehigh is not doing this because it cares about the environment, it's doing this because it wants to increase its profits. This particular plant has repeatedly gotten in trouble with state and federal regulators because of its staggeringly high levels of mercury emissions, (it is the second largest source of mercury emissions in the state of Maryland). A switch away from mercury heavy coal and towards this untested fuel is nothing more than a (literal) smoke screen to temporarily keep regulators off their backs. And finally, as Carroll County seems to poised to pull out of the disastrous Frederick incinerator partnership, it seems only too perfect that Lehigh, (whose past plant manager is now a county commissioner), would be starting to retrofit their plant to burn garbage. 
Wheelabrator, the garbage burning company that has apparently been buying its way through county and state governments, recently admitted to releasing contaminated water and ash sludge into waterways and wetlands around it's Saugus, Massachusetts waste incineration plant. This is the same Wheelabrator that would like to build one its trash incinerating plants in Frederick, claiming that the technology that they use is environmentally friendly. 
Sites at Monocacy, South Mountain highlight conflict with modern society
There are as many new developments this week as there are toxins emitted by a waste incinerator's smoke stack.
Richard Haddad, former president of the Carroll County Chamber of Commerce and now paid lobbyist, has weighed in (again) in favor of the proposed trash burning plant in a letter to the Carroll County Times. Mr. Haddad's letter is so riddled with factual inaccuracies that it can hardly be taken seriously, and yet in an era where lobbyists such as Haddad are granted unparalleled access to government, it is imperative that his attempts at misleading the public be rebutted. Our readers are encouraged to have a look at his letter and send their response to the Times. 
AROUND 200 people voiced their anger and opposition to the proposed "energy from waste" incinerator set for Devonport's North Yard.
Thanks to the efforts of this organization and others like it, the truth about the 
Posted:
By Jenna Russell
