The Harrisburg Incinerator and Waste Importation

Harrisburg City waste production: about 150
Incinerator design capacity:            760
Average burned in 2000:                 460
Current permitted limit:                500
Capacity if retrofitted:                720

The Harrisburg incinerator is large enough to handle 3-5 times the amount of trash that the City generates. This waste comes from throughout Dauphin County and even from out of state. The incinerator's out-of-state waste imports have increased over the years:

Mayor Reed's failed attempts to keep the incinerator fed:

• Bio-Oxidation Medical Waste Facility:

  In 1998-1999, Harrisburg Mayor Steven Reed was pushing for a 400 ton per day medical waste treatment plant to be built in another poor, minority section of the city. This proposed Bio-Oxidation plant would have been the largest commercial medical waste facility in the U.S., if not the world. The treated medical waste (heavy in chlorinated plastics like PVC) would have been fed to the Harrisburg incinerator, to guarantee the incinerator a waste stream. The Greater Harrisburg NAACP, along with several environmental groups, including the Pennsylvania Environmental Network, organized to stop the plant and won!

• New York City Trash: After Mayor Reed's attempt to feed the incinerator with treated medical waste failed, he resorted to begging New York City's mayor for trash: Harrisburg: Give us trash (3/12/1999)