NPR

3 Piles Of Garbage In Baltimore Highlight A City's Problem With Trash

A fire burning inside a Baltimore waste incinerator turns a mountain of garbage into a manageable pile of ash, and creates electricity as a byproduct. But that fire could be going out.
Overhead cranes transfer gathered trash into a feed hopper. The Wheelabrator processes about 2,250 tons of waste per day. (Rosem Morton for Here & Now)

Is your city or town tackling waste in an innovative way? Tell us about it, and we might dig deeper for a Here & Now story as part of our “Going To Waste” series.


On any given day, 300 trucks pull up to a building not far from downtown Baltimore and dump their loads into a pit filled with 2,200 tons of the city’s trash.

A fire burning inside that building turns the mountain of garbage into a manageable pile of ash, and creates electricity as a byproduct.

But the fire could be going out.

The Baltimore City Council passed an ordinance in February that will put strict pollution limits on the two incinerators that operate in the city, including one owned by the New Hampshire-based company Wheelabrator.

“It’s got to be closed,” says Ed Reisinger, the

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