Environmental justice groups demand end date for trash burner
The Hennepin Energy Recovery Center, left, earlier this year. Photo by David Pierini
By David Pierini, Editor
Environmentalists, including several Northside residents, are turning up the pressure on Hennepin County commissioners to shut down a trash incinerator that has run virtually non-stop for more than 30 years.
The HERC, short for Hennepin Energy Recovery Center, burns around 1,000 tons of garbage each day and its downtown location is one of a number of polluters that Northsiders say makes their neighborhoods the worst in the state for respiratory illnesses and related deaths.
The calls for closure have gone on for years. Now, HERC opponents feel renewed traction thanks to a zero-waste energy plan adopted by commissioners last year and an incentive from state lawmakers that would give the county $25 million to fund a key component of the plan.
In order for the money to flow, commissioners must first adopt a timetable to close HERC.
At an August 15 board meeting, Commissioners faced several sign-carrying activists and a strong message from Northsiders to close by 2025.
Two physicians from Broadway Family Medicine spoke and brought with them a letter from more than 20 other healthcare providers in North Minneapolis. All urged commissioners to phase out the HERC.
“I need your help. As a physician, this can’t be all on myself and my colleagues to take care of these folks,” Dr. Aaron Rosenblum said. “We do what we can do to take care of people with all sorts of heart and lung conditions, but if we don’t fix the environment that is exacerbating and causing so many of these problems, we’re stuck, we’re just doing damage control.”
With only a short time allowed for HERC-related comments, environmental justice organizers were strategic about the list of speakers, each with two minutes to make their case. Along with physicians, Northside residents talked about their fear for long-term impacts of emissions from the HERC’s smoke stacks.
“It’s an injustice for the people who look like me as we’re forced to take the biggest risks,” said Marco Fields, who is Black and lives in the Camden neighborhood. “I’m sure there was a justification at one time for using an incinerator. But the way I look at it, it’s like a landfill but for the air. It doesn’t make the problem go away, it spreads out.”
HERC opponents raised their signs outside the Board of Commissioners meeting on Aug. 15. Photo by David Pierini
A line item in the legislature’s $2.6 billion bonding bill that passed in the spring earmarks $26 million for an anaerobic digester, which would handle organic waste (from food scraps risks to biodegradable packaging) and convert it into fertilizer, compost soil and biogas fuel.
An organic processing center has the potential to reduce the waste stream that goes into the incinerator by a third. The county can have the money but first much submit a plan for the HERC.
But shutting it down, county officials say, won’t be a simple flip of the switch.
Commissioners await direction from waste management staff on how to proceed with the HERC’s eventual closing. County staff, too, are waiting for guidance – from the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, which is currently revising rules around trash incinerators.
The county would give municipalities time to find disposal alternatives and ramp up programs for reducing trash and recycling. Residents, businesses and manufacturers need to double-down on recycling efforts and make the reuse of recovered materials financially viable.
Only then, could the sun set on the HERC.
County board Chair Irene Fernando, who represents North Minneapolis, said commissioners are not avoiding the discussions around the HERC’s fate. They just need the details on how to proceed with a plan.
“So that’s what’s difficult,” Fernando said after the meeting. “It’s a bit more multi-faceted (than just closure). From a governance standpoint, we have obligations to meet. I can certainly appreciate that government is not moving at the speed that residents expect or desire.”