Proposed Facilities

Proposed projects are as important to know about before moving to an area as they are to keep track of once you are already living in the area. The impact a potential proposed project may have on people’s health and housing investment can’t be understated. Even if you do not own the place you live, you certainly owe it to you and your family’s health to be aware of what could happen and what you could be exposed to if the proposed facility becomes a reality. 

 

Finding out about a negative proposed facility as soon as possible is critical. If you approach the situation while it is going through the process of becoming a reality, you have more options than if you didn’t start until the project was already underway. Once you have already moved to a town or after a project is already approved and preparing to be built down your street, you can be put in a position you really do not want to find yourself. 

 

Tony and I have known people who found out a sand and rock quarry was coming in across the street from them only after they moved into their home. Another friend of ours called us up hysterical about a proposed trash incinerator the county wanted to build less than a half mile from their house. It was in the works for 18 months before our friend knew about it because they never looked. Yes, keeping an eye on proposed projects does take a little effort, but the small amount of time will pay off.

 

There are only two ways to stop a highly destructive, dangerous, and poisonous project. The first is to close an operating project down, which is a very long and hard road to go down. Success, if achieved, comes at a great cost of personal sacrifice in both time and health. The other way is stopping a proposed project before they ever get the chance to put a shovel in the ground. This is more possible than most people realize. 

 

Proposed projects come in a range of sizes and from a variety of sources in both public agencies and private companies. Some of the projects are even proposed and backed by the federal, state, or county government. There may be a proposal by the state to build a new highway or extend or expand an existing one. It could be a county trying to expand an existing landfill. It also may be a private company who wants to build a cement plant or open a gravel pit in the town.

 

When evaluating proposed projects, I always ask myself three questions: 

 

• What are the potential health risks to people in the area of the project? 
• What is the environmental impact the proposed project will have to the region in general? 
• Is this project one that is suitable for anyone’s backyard? 

 

Every person deserves the same consideration not to be subjected to the negative impacts the project will have wherever it goes. I am part of the NIABY movement–not in anyone’s backyard. If a proposed project is not good to be in my backyard, it is no good to be in anybody else’s.

 

Usually, the majority of proposed projects are simple, harmless ones. Others, however, will leave a lasting impact on the town and people, and not a good one. To be clear, there are three types of proposed projects. 

 

1. Some are highly desirable ones such as when the first White Castle hamburger shop announced it was opening here in the Phoenix area. People waited and watched for months once the project was first announced. When it finally opened, people mobbed the place, sometimes waiting in line for three hours for a bag of hamburgers. A new Krispy Kreme or a Costco may be another example of a development with a lot of expectations and people being really excited about a new project being built and opening.

 

2. Others are the regular, everyday projects like a new convenience store or drug store coming in. Maybe the town is adding a park someplace, or a developer is building a new office building or a housing development. Regular, everyday projects usually do not create a whole lot of excitement either way, and if there are any negatives, they usually only involve complaints about some extra traffic or making certain the project blends in with the existing area.

 

3. The worst kind of projects are the ones that the majority of the neighborhood or town view as highly undesirable and unwanted. There is a big difference between a project that is undesirable because it just isn’t wanted by the people living there and a project that is undesirable because it is a threat. This type of project is undesirable because it’s a hazard to locals’ health and the environment. The impact of this type of project is going to affect much more than the small area it will be constructed on. It is going to affect the entire area surrounding it. 

 

For this dangerous type of undesired project, there are usually documentable, negative consequences to people’s health from similar projects already in operation in other places. The safety of the water supply for the community could be impacted. Pollutants and chemical emissions from the proposed facility could be highly toxic and contribute large amounts of unhealthy particulate matter to the air. It may also be that the project itself is not the problem, but the company proposing it is. They may have such a horrendous track record at other operations they run as to make this one a potential threat. Many times Tony and I have seen shady and incompetent operators forced out of one town or state only to try to open the same facility someplace else where they are unknown. 

 

Many times the project developer or the town itself will try to downplay the impact of the project by calling it a small operation or by comparing it to non-threatening everyday examples to soften or disguise the true impact it is really going to have. However, the size of the project is absolutely no definite indicator of the potential negative effects it may have on the surrounding area and community as a whole. There is no predetermined size to what constitutes one of these highly undesirable projects or what makes one worse than another. The real factors to consider are the actual impact the project will have once it is completed and running. These highly undesirable types of projects may be very large in size and impact a huge area in the community, but sometimes they could be much smaller in actual size and still have an impact on a big area. It all depends on what the specific project is. 

 

A small project with a very large impact would include a medical waste incinerator. The space the building itself would occupy may only be a single acre of land, but the toxic pollution it would put out would impact the area for miles around. 

 

In Reno, Nevada, Stericycle is trying to construct a medical waste incinerator. The company incinerator was finally chased out of North Salt Lake City, Utah after years of polluting the neighborhood and being cited for numerous violations of hazardous emissions and non compliance with EPA regulations. An attempt to locate in North Las Vegas met defeat in 2019 with tremendous community opposition. Now the Reno proposal is working through the permit phases as we write this chapter. The entire area will be subjected to emissions of mercury, cadmium, lead and many more toxic chemicals. Hundreds of trucks of medical waste from the western U.S. and Canada would roll through the area bringing tons of waste to dispose. The town is rising up in opposition to try to halt this project before it is approved.  

 

A large-scale project in this category has sometimes changed the entire character of a community forever. One only needs to look at some of the huge mining operations that left a toxic legacy behind for residents to deal with once they closed for decades. The mining company operators sold the projects as creating needed jobs for the community and supporting the local economy, but the opposite happened. The jobs eventually left, and the economy collapsed unless another equally undesirable place came in. The town was left with the devastation the mine created in addition to thousands of acres polluted with mine tailings and acid waste which will last decades.

 

In the rural southeast section of Ohio, farms, horses and the forest are the peaceful life people in the area choose for themselves to live. Now in Perry County that way of life appears to be threatened with a proposed 545 strip mine for coal that will destroy the state forest it is to be located in. The area was already devastated once by a strip mine that never did the land reclamation and left the forest barren and destroyed after taking what they wanted. Now the scenario may be replaying with another company coming in. Using jobs as a way to get support in the high unemployment area and the claim the land will be better in the end it just may happen again unless the people can stop the project. 

 

Because of the damage and impact one of these highly undesirable projects may have, immediately letting the local government know the community will not accept and allow this to become a reality is the best response once the proposed project is known about. Much of the time the government agency or company proposing a project is well aware in advance of what the reaction the community will be when word gets out about the proposal. They try to feel out an area and see in advance how much resistance there may be before they officially propose. They try to locate key politicians and community influencers. There are professional people who make a career out of selling undesirable projects to communities and deflating resistance. Tony and I have gone up against them and seen the tactics they use to attack opponents to their projects. We have seen them refer to an extremely educated and knowledgeable woman talking about the negative impacts of the project as a “hysterical housewife.” They don’t pull punches. If your community establishes itself early on that it will put up a big fight, the project developers may reevaluate their decision once they see how strong, willing, and knowledgeable the project opponents are going to be. Protracted fights by communities, especially once they involve using legal tactics, are very costly to project developers. Looking elsewhere for another location is easier. If your community establishes itself as one that will put up a big fight, they likely won’t see the project as worth the effort.

 

Luckily, there are people who dedicate themselves to telling the truth about the negative impacts many of these undesirable projects will have on the community. Many places have already seen more than their share of destruction and do not want anymore. Plenty of times the proponents of undesirable projects pick a community that is already host to a variety of nasty places and try to force another one in. 

 

In Muncie, Indiana, residents luckily found out a metal recycling company was trying to get a permit to build an operation that would recycle steel dust. The company already has one facility in Alabama, a facility which is the second largest emitter of the toxic chemical mercury into the air. The plant in Muncie, based on the permit application, is likely to become number one. The residents are arming themselves with facts and have environmental consultants working for their side. While the company has its permit application going through processes at the state level, residents are poking holes in the environmental track record of the company and the claims of all the jobs and money it will bring to the community. The consultants are gathering the needed facts to back up why the permit should be denied. 

 

In late 2019, officials in Anchorage, Alaska, announced they were commencing a study for the purpose of building a huge trash incinerator. Not only were they considering building it to burn trash but also as a possible disposal method for the sewage sludge from the waste treatment plant. Authorities also awarded a sole source contract to one company instead of using an open bidding process, citing the need to speed the study up. The project is garnering massive opposition from residents who already have to put up with some of the most polluted air in the nation A study by the American Lung Association shows Anchorage has the 14th most polluted air in the country. The addition of the pollution from a trash incinerator would increase the level of particulate matter in addition to greenhouses gases to almost intolerable levels. While authorities say the actual construction may take seven to ten years, citizens are not taking this lightly.

 

In Montana, a group of people have become fed up with the mining industry, especially as yet another proposal for more of the same is trying to be pushed through. In the words of the Montana Conservation Elders: “The proposed Black Butte Copper Project is the latest in the long list of Montana mine proposals that sell the project to the public as a job creator with no downside. History, something near and dear to our group, demonstrates the true stories of mining in Montana. For a few jobs upfront, Montana’s environment is irreversibly damaged, and at the end of so many mining operations the mining corporations declare bankruptcy — American bankruptcy laws are for corporations, not for citizens — and these corporations have insufficient bonding to cover the costs of cleanup leaving taxpayers with the expense, and subsidizing these temporary mining jobs. Ghost towns and polluted streams across Montana speak to this boom, then bust cycle.”

 

Montana is not unique in this practice. Too many times one of these highly negative proposed projects seemingly comes out of nowhere and, depending on what it is, may totally turn a neighborhood or a town upside down–or worse. Projects such as opening low-level radioactive waste facilities can impact more than a town. Sometimes these projects have such a large impact they may even turn the entire county to do battle with a developer of a proposed project.

 

Examples of these battles show up in our news feeds almost weekly. Many times, quiet, clean, rural communities suddenly found themselves as a proposed host for landfills, incinerators, and sludge dumps. Places such as Boggs Township, Pennsylvania, with a population of 1,751 is targeted for a huge landfill. Gonzales, California, in the Salinas Valley is a proposed site of a trash incinerator. In Andrews, Texas, with 19,000 people is the dumping ground for all the mercury waste in the nation and currently proposed for the high level nuclear waste as well. Rural communities are frequently targeted by companies proposing waste disposal operations due to their low populations to offer resistance and, most times, lack of political clout in the inner circles of state-level politics. Companies often employ bullying tactics of lawsuits against the communities knowing the legal costs of fighting these projects is in excess of many of these towns’ annual budgets. 

 

Choosing rural areas for the most undesirable projects is not an isolated incident but one that happens fairly frequently. Tony and I have seen this happen personally in the mid-1980s in central New Jersey, witnessing the enormous impact a proposed facility like this could have been like a bomb going off. Everyone’s life changes almost overnight. People suddenly become activists, and researchers trying to learn all the facts about why the proposed facility should not be constructed. We spent four full years becoming citizen-experts in the operation and failures of hazardous waste incineration and disposal methods. After four long years of battling, our community managed to halt the construction of the facility. That victory came at a price: the fight became my life, superseding my job, and many times I would rather have been with my family. 

 

Recently in 2015, there was another proposal just like this on the Pennsylvania side of the Delaware River, directly across from some towns on the New Jersey side. In Falls Township, Pennsylvania, Elcon Recycling Services wants to build a hazardous waste incinerator capable of burning 200,000 tons of industrial wastes per year. The list of chemicals includes lead, cadmium, mercury vinyl chloride, and over 250 other known toxic compounds. The plant would emit hazardous substances 23 hours per day according to their proposal. The company is promoting the 55 jobs created by the toxic waste incinerator as an incentive for the town to welcome it in. The battle against the incinerator is in its fifth year now, and neither side is backing down. 

 

Other examples include the current battles to create a temporary storage site for all the high-level nuclear waste in the country. Several sites have been proposed by private companies seeking to build this nuclear waste storage facility, but the resistance to this at some sites is not just coming from citizens, but the higher levels of government as well. In New Mexico, the governor announced he is opposed to the project and does not find the proposed location acceptable. The opposition from the highest office in the state deals a potential setback and high hurdle to the private company proposing the interim nuclear waste storage facility. 

 

The possible list of proposed projects covers a lot of areas, many covered in other chapters. There are many more that are not specifically mentioned, but you know them when you see them. All you need to do is look on the internet and search for “community fights proposed project.” The results will really open your eyes. 

 

For example, in the Finger Lakes in upstate New York, there is a proposal for building one of the largest trash incinerators in the country, right in the middle of the region’s wine country. Seemingly out of nowhere, a company with minimal ties to the waste disposal business decided to build this huge incinerator. The town is fighting back. The town and the region also have the governor of the state opposing the project as well. 

 

In Cumberland County, Virginia, the county is proposing to open what residents are calling a “mega dump” for trash by expanding a current operation. The residents say they first heard about the proposal in June 2018, and by August that year, the County Board of Supervisors jammed it through and approved it. The neighboring county is against the project as it is close to the border of the two counties. The residents are using some legal tactics in addition to making their opposition and facts about the impacts of the proposal known. The landfill expansion recently announced it was reducing the physical size of the project by half in an effort to appease the opposition. That turned out to be a Trojan horse as the tactic was to still double the trash but just pile it wider and higher on one giant pile instead of two. 

 

Up in Washington state south of the town of Newport, a company from Canada that already has the support of local and state agencies is seeking to build a huge smelter for processing silicone. Smelters in particular are high on the list of projects with health impacts far greater than the size of the operation itself. Any type of operation that processes quartz creates micro-particles of silica dust, which is one of the most harmful particulates there are. Residents in the town are organizing, using facts and research of similar projects to demonstrate how harmful this project will be to the health of the residents and damaging it will be to the pristine environment that people live there to enjoy. The local and state officials, meanwhile, argue the smelter will provide dollars and jobs in an attempt to offset the negative impact of the smelter. The locals remain undeterred.

 

Battles over proposed projects sometimes drag on for years as the developers try to wear down the resistance. We have seen incinerator projects that took over five years from the time it was announced until construction started. We have also seen projects that, after ten years of community activists waging war, have finally been pulled from consideration due to varying factors.

 

In the small rural community of Grant Township, Pennsylvania, the people enjoyed a quiet life. Away from the industrialized cities, the community was located in an area complete with forests, rolling green hills, and freshwater streams. Then, suddenly, they found themselves pulled into a battle with a waste company seeking to drill and operate an injection well for toxic and radioactive fracking wastes. For seven years, the citizens battled the waste company, employing a variety of legal challenges. The small rural town even rewrote the town charter and adopted new local laws. The town banned the disposal of fracking wastes and injection wells on the grounds that it violated the people’s rights to clean air and water granted to them by the state constitution. Interestingly, the town also gave the same rights to the animals and plants as well. The state environmental agency revoked the permit given to the injection well company. This tactic may be a new one for the activist playbook to deal with other similar issues elsewhere. 

 

Finding out about proposed projects can sometimes be a bit difficult, especially the negative ones. Even doing searches on the internet sometimes may not turn up anything even though important events may be happening. As a result, sometimes these projects seem to come out of nowhere, but that usually isn’t the case. The reality of it is that the people behind the proposal usually are quite aware that the public will not welcome them with open arms. Sometimes they meet one on one with a county or town official so there is no record of the meeting or what was discussed. Whether it is the government looking to build a new landfill or a company that handles hazardous waste that wants to build an incinerator, these projects try to keep a very low profile as long as possible. They know once the word gets out that things will get a bit riled up.

 

The best source to look for information are the minutes and meeting agendas from town and county planning boards and zoning boards. Keeping an eye on those will let you know when something may be on the horizon. Better yet, get on the board to get an inside view. I served on both the zoning and planning board in my rural community. Quite a few times there would be a company representative or an attorney feeling out the town about a potential project they were looking to site. It always surprised me how few people attended the regular meetings, but when word got out about a potential dangerous or destructive project, the place was packed. Many times when a company sees a high level of resistance from the beginning, they go elsewhere and try again. That is your community’s best line of defense.