Environmental justice march planned in Chester
On Saturday, April 24, opponents of the Covanta incinerator are planning a caravan and march from Chester City Hall to the waste-to-energy facility to express their concerns that pollution from the stack is leading to asthma, cancer and other health issues.
Covanta officials say the effort is fraught with misinformation and falsehoods. Both sides have statistics and data to back up their assertions. In the middle are city and Delaware County residents, as well as municipal and county leaders, who must decide whether to extend a contract with the incinerator as early as May 1.
For Saturday’s Environmental Justice Day, Chester Residents Concerned for Quality Living are planning to meet at Chester City Hall, 1 E. Fourth St. in Chester at 10:30 a.m., rain or shine, then make their move to the Covanta facility at 10 Highland Ave. They are asking anyone interested in participating to email them at getinvolved@chesterresidents.org. They also have petitions supporting transitioning to zero waste from incinerating on their website at chesterresidents.org.
“I want it to be kind of
“Although it’s not beluga whales and spotted owls and bald eagles, our environment deserves to be protected and saved too. I think we should have something that’s called an Endangered Humans Act … because we are endangered in Chester by the pollution that I think is the number one health hazard to the residents of Chester as a whole.”
— Zulene Mayfield, one of the event organizers
celebratory,” Zulene Mayfield, one of the event organizers, said. “We know what’s wrong with Chester. We know the doom and gloom and people think it’s this black cloud over Chester but we also want to present that there’s life in Chester.”
At its core, the event is about the environmental status of Chester and surrounding areas.
“Although it’s not beluga whales and spotted owls and bald eagles, our environment deserves to be protected and saved too,” Mayfield said. “I think we should have something that’s called an Endangered Humans Act … because we are endangered in Chester by the pollution that I think is the number one health hazard to the residents of Chester as a whole.”
The Delaware Valley Resource Recovery Facility began construction by Westinghouse in 1988 and became operational in 1991. In 2005, Covanta began operating the facility and then acquired it. One of the largest incinerators in the United States, it burns 3,500 tons of trash each day from as far away as New York City, Oklahoma and even Canada and Puerto Rico. About 31 percent of the trash burned there comes from Delaware County and approximately 2-3 percent comes from Chester.
Covanta has a contract with the Delaware County Solid Waste Authority that expires April 30, 2022. However, it can be renewed as early as May 1 and is under consideration by the authority, which is holding a public session on the matter May 5.
For the activists, main issues include health and the environment.
“We do know our children have five times the rate of asthma as people in the state, that cancer rates in Chester are extremely high, the deaths from cancer, the mortality rates in Chester are extremely high,” Mayfield said, adding that they haven’t been able to get the time lost in classrooms for students because of asthma or breathing-related issues.
“The ash is being released,” she added. “It’s falling on people, in the air, on our homes, on our cars, on our walkways, our driveways, our yards, our stoops. We are walking and tracking that stuff right into our house.”
Mike Ewall of Energy Justice Network said the most recent statistics available were for 2010 and showed that Chester’s hospitalization rate for asthma for children under 17 years old was nearly 0.17 percent. During that same period, Delaware County’s rate was just above 0.06 percent and the state average was approximately 0.05 percent.
“There’s the question of what’s coming out of the smokestack … but that data is very spotty and subject to manipulation,” Ewall said
of the incinerator. “We know that they’re the largest air polluter in Chester by far. We know that they’re one of the top polluters in the whole sevencounty Philadelphia area.”
Mayfield said Chester and Delaware County shouldn’t be responsible for other people’s trash.
“Let Philly solve their own problem,” she said. “Let New York solve their own problem. It sounds very simplistic but in the end, all of Delco is paying for this ... the health issues that we are experiencing now, we’ve never experienced those issues. We’ve gotten people who’ve gotten rashes unexplained. There are other issues besides the cancers and the asthma rates.”
In addition, Mayfield talked about residual effects from 400 to 500 trucks hauling trash to the site every day, such as the impact on city roads.
Covanta spokesman James Regan said there are a number of risk factors that contribute to various health conditions that need to be considered before one entity can be blamed entirely.
“Study after study have indicated modern (waste-to-energy) facilities do not pose a significant health risk of any kind for those living in direct proximity,” he said. “The Chester facility operates up to 99% below its federally regulated standards for emissions, minimizing environmental impacts.”
In addition, he pointed to Covanta statistics that put the facility at 10 percent or less of air emissions in Delaware County, with other sources being vehicles, residential fuel uses, industrial uses, electric generation, commercial cooking and mobile uses.
Regan added that the air quality in Chester has been getting better, not worse, over time with concentrations of nitrogen dioxide 59 percent lower in Delco than Philadelphia in 2019 and decreases of sulfur dioxide up to 95 percent in the last 20 years.
Covanta also contributes approximately $5 million to the Chester budget annually as a fee for being a host city.
In March, Swarthmore passed a resolution asking Delaware County Council to ensure that the solid waste authority does not extend its contract with Covanta. Chester Mayor Thaddeus Kirkland responded to that action at a city council meeting, asking municipalities to have a conversation with those in Chester.
“Covanta is the trash-to-steam facility here in Chester, that is not only a good partner with our city government but follows the guidelines from the EPA,” the mayor said. “We have been elected to do a job here in the city of Chester and we are going to make sure that these industries are not harmful to our young people, any of our residents or the environment.”
In the meantime, the activists want to see monitors placed throughout Delaware County and continuous in-stack monitoring at the Covanta facility.
“For most pollutants, they test once a year and do it under the best operating conditions and they monitor themselves,” Ewall said, adding that continuous in-stack monitoring has shown emissions 30 to 50 percent higher.
“When you know that you have an area that has poor health and poor access to health care, then anything you can do to mitigate further damages to the health needs to be done, point blank period,” Mayfield said and one way to bring attention to that message is through the march/caravan planned for this coming weekend.
“I didn’t want it to be an Earth Day because to me, Earth Day is so sanitized,” Mayfield said, saying that’s centered on picking up trash and planting trees. “But in the meantime, you still got environmental racism going on killing (expletive deleted) communities. That’s why we chose the name Environmental Justice Day ... because when people talk about Earth Day, they don’t think about communities like Chester.”
And while she appreciated the trees being planted and the trash being picked up, she said more needs to be done.
“If you don’t mitigate a major source of pollution, then what are you really doing?” Mayfield asked.