Amig@s, Friends, 🙏🥰♻️🌱please respond to this before March 13

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Daniela Ochoa Gonzalez

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3:28 PM (8 hours ago) 3:28 PM

Dear Friends in Poolesville and Montgomery County,

Fond salutes. Could you please carve time between now and before 11:59 p.m. this Friday, March 13, 2026, to respond to this survey asked by MoCo Dept of Environmental Protection:

https://survey.zohopublic.com/zs/p9BBFJ?lang=en

Why is this so important for me to ask you, personally as a favor?

Because the county is about to decide whether or invest in one of the following options to process discards generated in our county:

OPTION 1: Invest hundreds of millions of dollars to repair the clunky incinerator

OPTION 2: Invest on hauling the non-recoverable discards generated in the county to a landfill and compost our at least 40,600 tons of food scraps that are currently being incinerated and turn it into compost amendment instead.

OPTION 3: Invest on acquiring an “Advance Waste Processing” technology to further recover and recycle about 140k tons of waste (in addition to the 4,600 tons of food scraps being composted).

For more info here the recording 🎬 of the Open House:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qveAZLu2xFA

And here a link to the DEP▶️ slide deck:

https://www.montgomerycountymd.gov/DEP/Resources/Files/trash-recycling/zero-waste/solid-waste-management-march-open-house.pdf

The ask: Respond to the survey paying attention to the questions, as they can be tricky!

Here some examples of what I am referring to:

When being asked: "Rate how safe you believe the Resource Recovery Facility is, as a way to manage our waste in the County on a scale from 1 to 5, where 5 is "extremely safe" and 1 is "extremely unsafe."

Personal take on it (hopefully you will agree and respond something similar): It's extremely unsafe! The “Resource Recovery Facility” ( this is what DEP calls the incinerator) When compared to landfills, pollutes twice as much Greenhouse Gases and multiple times worse the amount of toxic emissions than landfills. And remember our Incinerator has now had two major breakdowns in the past year causing massive increased dioxin leaks for possibly months!

When being asked: "Rate how effective you believe the Resource Recovery Facility is as a way to manage our waste in the County, on a scale from 1 to 5, where 5 is "extremely effective" and 1 is "extremely ineffective." Consider 3 to be neutral."

Personal take on it: It's extremely ineffective! Using Incinerators for burning waste provides no incentives for us to ramp up our zero waste programs like composting. Even if we reduce our waste production, we have to continue to pay full price to burn it. Our zero waste goals include doing the least harm and burning waste is an ineffective way to meet those goals. Burning causes emissions that harm our community and a minority community in Virginia, which receives our toxic ash. Burning is one of the dirtiest ways to make electricity--instead, we should be investing in clean green energy production.

The next 2 questions ask if you are okay with sending our trash to an out-of-state landfill or an in-county landfill. Both are much safer for us AND for the receiving community than incineration (we- MoCo collectively, we all) Why? Because we currently dump 150K tons a year of toxic incinerator ash on a Virginia community). Even with diesel trucking the total emissions from landfilling are less than half those of incineration.

Personal recommendation: “I am fine with it, no matter what”. (The best answer would be “I prefer the option that does the least harm to anyone” but the survey only gives you: “I am fine with it as long as it doesn’t harm anyone’s health or the local environment”. This answer could be used against landfilling because it does some harm just not nearly as bad as incineration. LANDFILLING IS THE SAFER OPTION FOR EVERYONE.

Thank you SO much!!! Please watch the video if you have questions or contact me, happy to help. Please let me know if you do respond to the survey