Maryland officials crowed back in 2023 about hitting a medical waste incinerator with a long history of pollution violations with one of the largest environmental criminal fines in Maryland history – a $1.75 million penalty.

But after Curtis Bay Energy’s guilty plea and settlement, South Baltimore residents were still reporting emissions incidents at the facility.

The Maryland Department of the Environment (MDE), they said, was dismissing their concerns.

“‘Give the new ownership time’, the MDE staff told us. ‘The frequency of the black smoke is going down,’” recalled Greg Sawtell,  a member of the South Baltimore Community Land Trust (SBCLT).

“But there shouldn’t be any of these incidents. It seemed like, after MDE issued that fine in 2023 it was like, We’re done here. Environmental justice achieved.”

Months after MDE filed another suit against the company, residents wondered why there were no enforcement actions.

So a network of community members, including the Land Trust, the Community of Curtis Bay Association, residents from nearby Anne Arundel County and researchers from Johns Hopkins, mounted a concentrated campaign to document the pollution from the faded yellow metal building at 3200 Hawkins Point Road.

“We pulled out our cell phones and started recording it. We got lots of other testimony from workers and community members. Then we took the extra step to get trail cams to do continuous recordings,” Sawtell recalled. “And we were able to show that these releases and fires were not just one-offs, but practically continuous.”

Today the community got the news they hoped for. Sawtell said he got a call from MDE Director of Air and Radiation Chris Hoagland saying that the incinerator is shutting down.

“On Thursday, they’re going to be announcing a consent order, which includes a settlement agreement by the company to stop functioning as an incinerator,” Sawtell said.

“The timeline is like six to eight months,” he noted. “They’ll lose their their permit, so they won’t operate as an incinerator anymore but they’ll continue to operate at a lower capacity as a transfer station.”

“We were able to show that these releases and fires were not just one-offs, but practically continuous”  – Greg Sawtell, South Baltimore Community Land Trust.

Sawtell called it “a huge victory and a remarkable example of an on-going community investigation that actually panned out to produce concrete change.”

“They had lots of reason to give up, but the most overburdened communities of Maryland persevered and won,” he said.

Previous Brew Coverage

• Baltimore medical waste incinerator still pollutes, burning trash from as far away as Florida (8/9/24)

• South Baltimore medical waste incinerator hit with a $1.75 million state fine and penalty (10/17/23)