Reworld Delaware Valley is the largest waste incinerator in the United States. The incinerator started operating in Chester City, PA in December 1991 and burns close to its capacity of about 3,500 tons of waste per day. The incinerator has imported and burned waste from as far as Canada, Oklahoma and Puerto Rico, but most comes from Delaware County, Philadelphia, New York, New Jersey, and Ocean City, MD. [Read more on their size and waste sources/contracts.]
Air pollution & health impacts
It is the largest single air polluter in the City of Chester, and ranks #1 for most pollutants in all of Delaware County and in the 7-county Philadelphia region. It is also #1 in environmental violations of all industry in Chester City. [Read more on their air emissions and accidents/violations.]
The incinerator operates without two of the four major pollution control systems that most trash incinerators have. It has operated for over 30 years with no controls to reduce emissions of nitrogen oxides (NOx) that trigger asthma attacks, and no controls for highly toxic dioxins and mercury, which cause cancers, birth defects, learning disabilities, and much more. Reworld is only starting to install one of those missing systems in 2025 due to new regulations. This system will only reduce the NOx by about 18%. Using modern controls could reduce their NOx emissions by 70-80%, but this is not being required because it is not held to modern standards. Even after the improvement on this one pollutant, they’ll still be the largest single source of NOx pollution in _____. [Read more on their air pollution controls.]
The Philadelphia area is surrounded by the nation’s worst cluster of trash incinerators. The incinerator in Chester is one of five surrounding Philly, and all five are among the region’s seven largest industrial air polluters. Three of them are owned and operated by Reworld (Covanta) and are the largest air polluters in Delaware, Montgomery, and Camden Counties.
This industrial air pollution has health consequences. The Philadephia area is ranked as a top ten “asthma capital” every year. Philadelphia, Chester City, and the region suffer high cancer risks due in part to this toxic pollution. [Read more on health impacts.]
“Waste-to-energy” (trash incineration) = Trash into ash and air pollution
Trash incinerators are not “waste-to-energy” facilities. They do not magically turn matter (waste) into energy, violating the laws of physics. Every ton that goes in comes out as air pollution or toxic ash. 25-30% of the tons burned come out as ash which is trucked up to Rolling Hills Landfill in Berks County. The rest of the tons go up the smokestack, including many pollutants that rain down on communities, contributing to health problems. From 2003-2005, Covanta hosted Clean Metal, LLC to run an unpermitted operation next door to the incinerator, shaking ash off of unburned metals to recycle the metals. Since [2020?], some of the incinerator’s ash has been brought to their new ash recycling operation in Falls Township, Bucks County, where they try to recycle additional metals and reuse ash in asphalt. [Read more on incineration, Clean Metal, LLC, and ash “recycling.” and also here]
The incinerator was marketed as a “trash-to-steam” plant, and older residents still think of it as such, even though that is another unscientific public relations term for a trash incinerator. It’s much more than just steam coming out of their smokestack. Steam is just water vapor, and there’s much more in trash than water. We’re not throwing ice cubes in our trash cans.
What brought the incinerator to Chester
Known as the Delaware County Resource Recovery Facility, the trash and industrial waste burner on Chester’s waterfront was originally owned by Waste Resource Energy Inc., a subsidiary of Westinghouse, before changing hands twice, as it was sold to American Ref-Fuel in May 1997, then to Covanta Energy in June 2005. Covanta changed their name to Reworld in April 2024.
After the county’s three old incinerators closed by 1979, there was a competition in the 1980s between Chester City and Delaware County for who’d build a new incinerator. The county won after former Chester City mayor John “Jack” Nacrelli, a convicted racketeer and organized crime boss, convinced Chester City Council to support Delaware County’s plan to build the incinerator in Chester. [Read more on this history.]
Environmental racism
Chester is a famous example of environmental racism due to the incinerator and the cluster of polluting facilites nearby. Protests were held in the early 1990s, including actions blocking trucks, and multiple organizations kept this incinerator a matter of controversy ever since. [Read more on environmental racism and the pollution cluster in Chester.]
Incineration is worse than landfilling
Incinerating trash in Chester (and landfilling toxic ash at Rolling Hills Landfill) does 2.3 times as much harm to people’s health and the environment than bringing trash directly to the landfill. A detailed life cycle analysis conducted for the county documented this, and showed that implementing the Zero Waste Plan (including ending incineration) would greatly reduce health and environmental harms. Also, compared to using the landfill directly, incineration affects far more people, and people who are largely Black and low-income, making it an environmental justice issue. [Read more on landfilling vs. incineration.]
Zero waste = more jobs
Implementing the county’s Zero Waste Plan will create many new jobs. Incineration creates the fewest jobs of any waste management option. Reusing, recycling and composting create far more jobs. Reworld is not a large employer in Chester. In ___, they admitted that only 6 out of 105 jobs at the incinerator were held by Chester residents, even though a deal was made for much more employment of Chester residents when the incinerator was first proposed. While employment of Chester residents has improved some since [2021?], these are not healthy or sustainable jobs, and 5-10 times as many would come from implementing Zero Waste alternatives. [Read more about zero waste and jobs.]
Financial ties
Chester City and the Delaware County Solid Waste Authority (DCSWA) are addicted to revenues from the incinerator. [9%?] of the city budget comes from host fees from the incinerator. The city gets $5/ton for every ton burned from outside of Delaware County, and just $2/ton for every ton burned from within the county, thanks to a poorly negotiated agreement with DCSWA agreed to by Thaddeus Kirkland when he was Chester’s mayor. [is this still in place or was it changed by the receiver?] DCSWA also relies on revenues from disposing of the incinerator’s ash in their Rolling Hills Landfill. [Read more about the host municipal agreement and DCSWA’s contract with the incinerator.]
Greenwashing
Reworld is known for its greenwashing — deception and misinformation used to make their dirty industry look green. Even their name change, announced just before Earth Day 2024, is designed to make them sound eco-friendly. They hijack terms like “zero waste” and have local sports stadiums such as Subaru soccer stadium in Chester, and the Eagles’ Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia announcing that they are “zero waste to landfill,” which means that they incinerate what they cannot reduce/reuse/recycle/compost and pretend that the toxic ash isn’t then landfilled. They even once explored building a tiny wind turbine on top of their Chester incinerator to look green! Since 2006, Covanta started annually funding Chester Environmental Partnership (CEP), and has used this to argue that they provide community benefits in order to secure state permits. CEP also consistently sings their praises and even gives them awards.
Recent Flier on Covanta Emissions
Chester, Pennsylvania is a small city south of Philadelphia and located in Delaware County. The city spans 6.1 square miles with 34,000 residents, and is also home to the largest trash incinerator in the country (Covanta), a sewage waste treatment facility and sludge incinerator (DELCORA), chemical manufacturing plants, and other polluting industries.
Over a century of systemic racism and political corruption has transformed the historic waterfront city on the Delaware River into a toxic regional waste hub and ONE OF THE WORST CASES OF ENVIRONMENTAL RACISM IN THE U.S.
Polluting industries have led to devastating consequences on community health and quality of life for the majority low-income black and brown community that lives in Chester. Incinerators and toxic companies target low-income areas and communities of color because they are seen as the path of least resistance.
Covanta Delaware Valley, in the City of Chester, Pennsylvania, is the nation’s largest trash incinerator, burning up to 3,510 tons of municipal and industrial waste every day. They’re the largest air polluter in Chester City and one of the top few air polluters in the 7-county Philadelphia region. They operate without two of the four pollution control devices common to trash incinerators. Trash incineration, even with all of the normal pollution controls, is more polluting than coal power plants, and is worse than landfilling the waste directly. When burning trash, 30% of it becomes toxic ash that makes landfills more dangerous to groundwater. The other 70% becomes air pollution. The toxic ash from Covanta Delaware Valley is dumped in the Delaware County Solid Waste Authority’s Rolling Hills Landfill in Berks County, PA.
Covanta Delaware Valley has accepted waste from 21 Pennsylvania counties, 14 other states (as far as Oklahoma), Puerto Rico, and Canada. In 2020, they burned an average of 3,391 tons/day, with 31% coming from Philadelphia, another 31% from Delaware County, 17% from DE (most/all of which is rerouted Manhattan trash trains that go through Chester on train, then is transloaded onto trucks in Wilmington to be trucked back into Chester), 16% from NJ, another 4% from NY, 1.6% from MD (all or nearly all from Ocean City), and less than 1% from 4 other PA counties plus NC and VA. Just about 1.8% of the total is Chester City’s trash. Learn more about Covanta’s waste contracts.
In December 2020, Covanta was interviewed online and we commented on the Facebook livestream. Covanta responded in a 13-page piece full of misinformation. You can find our rebuttal here. Our initial comments are in black bold font, Covanta’s responses are in unbolded bullet points, and our responses to their responses are in bold red font.