Hit ‘em where it hurts…The Bottom Dollar

By Will Fadely, Baltimore Program Organizer – Follow Will on Twitter (@TrillChillWill )

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Since Energy Answer's entrance into Baltimore in 2008, we have been organizing with numerous groups like Chesapeake Climate Action Network (CCAN), Sierra Club, Institute for Local Self Reliance (ILSR), Community Research, Environmental Integrity Project (EIP) and others in order to fight the proposed Energy Answers Incinerator. Especially instrumental was Free Your Voice a group of local students assisted by United Workers. The campaign has focused on encouraging groups contracted to receive energy from the monstrosity known as Energy Answers to divest from dirty Waste-To-Energy (WTE) that pollutes our communities and invest into truly green energy. With a stroke of Friday the 13th luck, we had some success! The Baltimore Regional Cooperative Purchasing Committee (BRCPC) and its members voted to terminate their contract to buy energy from the Energy Answers Incinerator proposed for Baltimore City. This is a big step toward stopping the incinerator! Some members of BRCPC include Baltimore County Public Schools, MD Department of General Services, and the City of Annapolis, to name a few. It shows that after five years those originally supporting the nation's largest waste-to-energy incinerator being built within one mile of schools, playgrounds and communities recognize it is a poorly conceived and unjust project. The time has come for our community to take a stand for what we want and deserve. We deserve clean air, we deserve a say in what happens in our community and this decision has given us a step towards that right. "This community has been dumped on for years; it's time for a positive change," Meleny exclaimed, a Brooklyn Park resident. Now that BRCPC has opted out of receiving dirty energy from Energy Answers, LLC, it opens the door for truly green alternatives, such as a Curtis Bay resident's proposed plan for a solar farm, and other zero waste options. These alternatives have shown to create more jobs, clean and fair development for Curtis Bay and Baltimore City. This should urge the other contractees with Energy Answers to terminate their agreements, as well as elected officials to pull their support, and give city residents the opportunity to invest in zero waste alternatives, while preventing further environmental injustice.