Harrisburg is in the business of attracting other people s waste and subjecting local residents to the environmental and economic consequences. It can handle the City s trash plus about 350 tons of trash from neighboring towns. The City already has contracts with three area landfills for this waste. It would be cheaper to ship waste to these landfills than to incinerate. Incinerators convert trash to toxic ash and toxic air emissions.
Incinerators require landfills for their toxic ash.
This ash is more dangerous than trash in a landfill because toxics more easily leach out of ash. At the Harrisburg incinerator, this toxic ash is dumped next door in Mount Ashmore - an illegal hazardous waste dump. These items represent a tremendous amount of recyclable material, all of which is currently collected and burned in the incinerator. None of these items can even be deposited at the tiny recycling drop-off at the incinerator itself. The state recycling law Act 101 requires Harrisburg to have a commercial recycling program, in which businesses are required to recycle.