Delco Environmental Justice is working to end waste incineration in Delaware County, PA and to win environmental justice in Chester City and nearby riverfront communities by preventing new industrial polluters from locating here.  In the course of these efforts, we advocate for a just transition to clean energy and zero waste solutions.

We started in 2007 as DelCo Alliance for Environmental Justice.  In our first six months, with help from Energy Justice Network, we defeated plans for the Israeli company, Koach Energy, to build the world’s largest tires-to-oil refinery in Chester.

Our primary concern is the Reworld (formerly Covanta) trash incinerator in Chester City.  It is the nation’s largest waste incinerator with the fewest pollution controls, and is the #1 industrial air polluter in the City of Chester, and in the entire county and Philadelphia region.  It drives up the high asthma and cancer rates in Chester and the region.

We are currently focused on on three goals:

1. Finalizing Delaware County’s Zero Waste Plan and getting it adopted, funded and implemented to stop the county’s waste from being incinerated in Chester (or anywhere) and to reduce waste in order to create jobs and preserve valuable space at Delaware County Solid Waste Authority’s Rolling Hills Landfill in Berks County.
2. Ending DELCORA’s use of incineration for the sewage sludge generated at their Western Regional Treatment Plant, a sewage treatment plant in Chester, and to transition to anaerobic digesters to biologically stabilize the sludge before landfilling it.  We also aim to have DELCORA stop accepting toxic industrial wastes such as landfill leachate.
3. Supporting residents of Chester in their efforts to close the filthy crematory at Lewis M. Hunt-Irving Funeral Home.

Join us!  You can get involved or simply sign up for updates using this involvement form.