Updated January 22, 2026

Note: See links to related material at the end of this update.

In September 2025, Montgomery County took a giant step toward overhauling its trash management systems. The County released an RFP (request for proposal) to private companies to propose the means and methods—and cost—of disposing of the County’s 550,000 tons per year of non-recyclable trash.

The bids from that process are now in and being evaluated. They are yet not public, and it may be the case that only the specifics of the winning bid will be made public—likely this month or by early February.

The winner of this bid process will be expected to manage the system they propose for an initial five years, with the likelihood the contract would continue beyond that point—if all goes well.

The choice of the winning bid launches a process of evaluation by the County Council and the public. That evaluation is primarily focused on the bidder’s plans, the expected transition period to a new system, and the cost.

The transition will be from burning the County’s trash at the Dickerson incinerator—the County’s existing system—to hauling it by truck (and maybe in the future by rail) to landfills outside the County and state.  Montgomery County lacks its own landfill site.

Truck hauling of trash to the nation’s roughly 3,000 landfills is by far the most common waste management system in the U.S. It accounts for the disposal of 65% of trash after recyclable material is diverted from the “waste stream.”

The transition in Montgomery County would mean that the 30-year-old Dickerson incinerator would be shuttered—once the new system is up and running.

By contract agreement, the County must give the incinerator’s operator, ReWorld, (formerly Covanta), six-month notice that its services are no longer needed.

It’s unclear at this point the time frame the bid winner will propose.

SCA has advocated for an alternative to incineration for more than a decade, and thus we have strongly supported the County’s RFP process. The Dickerson incinerator has been and remains today the worst single source of air pollution and greenhouse gases in the County—emitting toxic pollutants harmful to human health and some 600,000 tons per year of CO2 equivalent into our region’s air.

As bad as breathing these toxic fumes for decades has been for our community, the situation has become dire in recent months. An annual emissions test in September revealed that the incinerator regularly emitted nearly double the permitted limit and 21 times more of the deadliest chemicals known to science—dioxin and furans—since the last test was done a full year ago. There’s no safe emissions limit established for these toxic chemicals.

SCA’s advocacy to protect County residents’ health from the incinerator’s harmful emissions has influenced County officials to search for alternatives. But the rising cost of operating the aging incinerator facility also now plays a big role. At 30 years old, its infrastructure is breaking down. Most incinerators are decommissioned after approximately 22 to 27 years of use. ReWorld estimated last year that it would cost $50 to $100 million to keep the facility operating safely and efficiently for another 7 to 10 years.

Lingering confusion

Unfortunately, confusion about how the transition would and should roll out has recently raised the specter of delay—even before the winning bid has been revealed.

The new Council President, Natali Fani-Gonzalez, has told the County’s Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) that she will “not allow” the transition to landfilling proposal to be heard by the Council without seeing a full accompanying waste reduction strategy.

Such a reduction in the waste stream is a major component of the County’s overall plan. But how that gets implemented involves additional measures, some of which are complex and will take years to implement.

For example, the County Council has already budgeted for the first phases of an expanded program to remove commercial and residential food scraps from the waste stream. Three residential food scrap collection pilots are underway. The scraps would be composted along with yard waste. Food scraps make up between 17% and 20% of the current volume of waste. (See below for more about this and SCA’s role composting food scraps.)

Another component of the plan is to remove and recycle so-called “C&D” (construction and demolition) materials in lieu of burning or burying them. The County already does some of this. But a new, beefed-up program would seek to divert 100% of this refuse. C&D waste makes up about 20% of the County’s current waste stream.

A third aspect is to integrate high-tech methods to improve the County’s recycling rate—that is, to pull all the recyclable material possible from the trash after it is collected but before it goes to landfill. DEP is currently writing an RFP to choose a vendor to build and operate such a facility within the footprint of the Shady Grove Transfer Station (where most of the County’s trash goes first for sorting.)

A fourth strategy is to implement a Save-As-You-Throw payment scheme that would allow residents to recycle as much as they want, but pay a variable amount based on the volume of trash they put out (much the way we now pay for out electricity usage.)

These are important initiatives and SCA wholeheartedly supports them. However, we cannot support delaying the incinerator closure until they can all be fully implemented. The incinerator poses too great a threat to both human health and to the environment to justify further delay.

Personnel, politics and leadership

County elections in 2026 also threaten decisions and timelines affecting this issue.

County Executive Marc Elrich will be stepping down due to term limits. But he plans to run for a seat on the 11-member County Council (on which he served for many years before becoming County Executive). Three current council members are running to replace Elrich. And a host of candidates are poised to run for the council.

To add to the shifting landscape of County leaders, the new head of the Montgomery County Department of Environmental Protection (DEP)—Jennifer Macedonia—started in that post on Dec. 1. DEP is the County agency with purview over trash management.

As mentioned above, current County Council president Natali Fani Gonzalez (who represents District 6) is threatening to block discussion and a vote on the transition plan.

County Executive Elrich is working with Ms. Macedonia and DEP to develop a plan to present to the County Council in the next month that would lay out the specifics and timing of the various elements of a new waste management system. When the plan is presented, it’s our hope that the council president will bring it to the council for review and a vote on the plan and its budget in April or May.

SCA, other stakeholders, members of the County Council, and County residents now await announcement of the winning trash haul bid and the County Executive’s and DEP’s plans.

SCA’s position on closing the Dickerson incinerator

Any further delay in transitioning away from waste incineration this year is not in the best interests of County residents.

• Landfills today are better regulated and operated than even five years ago. SCA vetted 42 in the region with strict environmental justice (EJ) criteria and found many that have minimal impact on both the nearby population and the surrounding environment and five that met every EJ criterion and have receiving capacity. Toxic emissions from our incinerator that can harm human health are 2.5 to 5 times worse than the vetted landfills.

• Almost all modern landfills capture methane gas. Even with food scraps going to landfill, the greenhouse gas emissions would be around 40% lower than burning trash in Dickerson.

• Continuing to burn the County’s trash would almost certainly cost millions of dollars more per year. That’s because the aging incinerator requires significant upgrades and maintenance if it’s to be kept operating safely. Thus, the change from incinerating trash to landfilling it will save County taxpayers’ money.

• Switching to landfill will provide direct incentives to lower trash volume where burning does not. No matter the volume, the County pays ReWorld the same amount to burn.

• Conversely, if we landfill our trash, we will only pay for the amount we send. As diversion and recycling increases, our costs will drop.

• Montgomery County currently trucks 150,000 tons of toxic incinerator ash every year to a predominately Black community in Virginia. Sending our unburned trash to a vetted landfill that meets environmental justice criteria relieves an unhealthy burden to this community.

• The County spent more than a million dollars on studies by consultants of alternatives approaches to waste management. Although some meaningful data and points were raised in those studies, DEP found bias in the results and ended up rejecting the overall recommendations in favor of pursuing the landfill option and closing the incinerator.

The bottom line is this: If the price of truck hauling and landfill presented in the winning bid is acceptable and if the County enhances its recycling rate even further, diverts food scraps to compost, and incentivizes businesses and citizens to produce less garbage through behavioral change, the volume of trash going annually to landfill from Montgomery County could be reduced (over time) to an estimated 300,000 to 400,000 tons a year (reduced from 550,000 tons a year currently) with far less environmental and health impact, and release of greenhouse gases than incineration.

We’ll be updating this post as developments occur in coming weeks and months.