ROCKVILLE, Md. — The Montgomery County Council is scheduled to decide Tuesday whether the county keeps burning its trash at the Dickerson incinerator for decades to come or shuts the plant down and trucks the waste to landfills outside the county, a choice Council President Natali Fani-González has called “once-in-a-generation.”
The vote is set for 10 a.m. on the council’s Nov. 10 agenda, listed as action on “a Long Term Solid Waste Disposal Alternative.” Members will choose between two competing resolutions introduced Oct. 27, both drafted by council staff and both naming Fani-González as lead sponsor. The staff report for Tuesday calls the core decision “a binary one.”
Option 1 would declare that the council “supports keeping the Resource Recovery Facility open for the long term as the County’s primary method for the disposal of solid waste.” It asks the county executive to plan capital upgrades, propose a capital project and seek bids for a long-term operating contract that would begin no later than April 2031, when the current contract with operator Reworld ends.
Option 2 would declare support for “closing the Resource Recovery Facility and transitioning to the disposal of the County’s solid waste at out-of-county landfills,” and asks the executive to send the council an amendment to the county’s 2025-2034 solid waste plan. Both resolutions ask for a recommendation on Advanced Waste Processing, which sorts recyclables and organics out of trash, once a pending procurement ends, and both restate support for an in-county food-scrap composting facility.
Why the council says it must act now
Council staff wrote in the Oct. 27 worksession memo that “the consequences of a delayed decision are substantial.” Without a decision “in the next few weeks,” the memo said, the county “would lose the ability to execute an out-of-County landfill option under the pending request for proposal,” while the absence of a long-term commitment to the incinerator would cost the county the chance to make “necessary operational and environmental improvements.”
The Department of Environmental Protection’s timeline for closure, included in that memo, assumed a decision no later than Oct. 31, a long-haul contract executed by Nov. 30, notice to Reworld and the ash contractor by Dec. 31, and a closure date of Dec. 31, 2027.
The incinerator has operated in Dickerson since August 1995. The county extended Reworld’s operating contract to April 2031 through an emergency procurement in April 2025, according to the resolutions, which note the contract allows the county to opt out early on six months’ notice, subject to a termination settlement. The plant generates up to 52 net megawatts of electricity, and its ash is landfilled in Henrico County, Va., the staff memo said.
The cost comparison
The council’s own staff described the money projections as close. The Department of Environmental Protection projects that the base solid waste charge on a single-family property tax bill, $89.99 this fiscal year, would reach $139.87 in fiscal 2033 if the incinerator stays open, $139.85 under the executive’s plan to truck waste out with Advanced Waste Processing, and $121.97 under long-haul alone, according to the memo.
Those figures assume a $356 million incinerator renovation drawn from a 2025 Arcadis consultant report, including a 15 percent contingency and inflation. In answers to council members’ questions dated Nov. 5, staff said Reworld has proposed a less extensive renovation that leaves out boiler replacement, a difference of about $100 million, and selective catalytic reduction pollution controls, about $45 million. The Sugarloaf Citizens Association, which represents Dickerson-area residents, submitted estimates $800 million to $1.3 billion higher than Arcadis, staff wrote.
The memo also lists the plant’s record. It exceeded permit levels for dioxins and furans in September and December 2025; Reworld made repairs, and later tests were within limits. A county-commissioned study by EA Engineering found exposure for the most-affected resident and farm “approximately 20 to 300 times below” the cancer and noncancer thresholds used, the memo said.
Long-haul would add about 80 tractor-trailer trips a day into the Shady Grove Transfer Station in Derwood and 80 out, the Department of Environmental Protection estimates.
Elrich presses for closure
County Executive Marc Elrich, who has sought to close the incinerator since taking office in December 2018, sent council members a letter dated Nov. 5 that is attached to Tuesday’s agenda item. “I urge you to vote to close the incinerator,” he wrote. “However, if you are not ready to vote to close, I urge you to gather more information.”
Keeping the plant open, Elrich wrote, “will require hundreds of millions of dollars in upgrading or rebuilding the facility as well as finding a new location that is not located in a poor, minority community for ash disposal.” He pointed to waste-sorting plants he visited in San Jose, Calif., Pigeon Forge, Tenn., and Portsmouth, Va., and said either choice would require trucking trash in the short term, including during any rebuild of the incinerator.
Elrich told WTOP the vote was premature. “There’s no reason for any vote now,” he said. Fani-González told the station that “many of these contracts are going to expire soon,” that the council has held hearings on the issue, and that “either we close it, or we keep it open by modernizing it.” A decision needs six votes on the 11-member council.
Will Jawando, who was elected county executive on Tuesday and takes office in December, has said he supports closure. “I support closing the Dickerson trash incinerator and committing to a firm timeline to get it done,” he wrote in The Banner’s election guide, which reported that most council members have not said how they will vote.
Since Oct. 27, staff revised Option 1’s language on ash, replacing a request for bids on ash disposal or reuse with a statement of the county’s “commitment to the goals of minimizing the environmental and health impacts of ash disposal and advancing racial equity and social justice objectives,” according to the staff report.
Residents can follow the 10 a.m. session on the council’s website and send comments to county.council@montgomerycountymd.gov.
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