NPR

'People's Lives Are Being Put At Risk': Environmentalists Take On Baltimore's Trash Incinerator

Activists like Destiny Watford have successfully made their case to the City Council that a large trash incinerator is polluting the air and making residents in low-income neighborhoods sick.
Destiny Watford was winner of the 2016 Goldman Prize for North America after she inspired her Baltimore neighborhood to stop construction of what would have been the nation's largest waste-to-energy plant. She is now working to encourage alternative methods for trash management. (Rosem Morton for Here & Now)

Activists in Baltimore have successfully made their case to the City Council that a large trash incinerator is polluting the air and making residents in low-income neighborhoods sick.

In February, lawmakers passed a law putting strict pollution limits on the two incinerators that operate in the city, including the plant that burns most of Baltimore’s garbage and converts it to electricity. That plant is managed by the New Hampshire-based company Wheelabrator, which is

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