Download Ordinances
The Kulpmont ordinance that passed is a combination of the following two ordinances:
The Kulpmont ordinance was challenged in federal court and on 3/27/2008, the federal judge ruled in summary judgment in favor of the borough on all counts, upholding the ordinance. For details, see:
- Motion (by the Borough) for Summary Judgment (2/1/2008)
- Brief in Support of Motion for Summary Judgment (2/13/2008)
- Reply (of the crematory company) to Motion for Summary Judgment (2/28/2008)
- Order of Federal Judge Ruling in Favor of the Borough (3/27/2008)
- Judgment in Favor of the Borough (3/27/2008)
- “Crematory Lawsuit Dismissed” (3/29/2008 News Item article on the victory)
Mike Ewall, Founder and Executive Director of Energy Justice Network, has been pioneering the use of local clean air laws to stop proposed polluters and hold existing ones accountable. This page covers a few of the these efforts in Pennsylvania.
On January 9th, 2007, the Council of Kulpmont Borough — a small town in northeastern Pennsylvania — voted unanimously to pass the toughest mercury and dioxin standards in the U.S. This follows on our previous victory getting Pennsylvania’s West Reading Borough to unanimously pass a mercury-only version of the ordinance on July 18th, 2006. Both communities faced proposed crematoria.
We wrote the law to require that any crematorium or medical waste incinerator monitor continuously for mercury and dioxins and that all emissions data must be reported real-time to the public via a website. It also sets very strict standards for mercury and dioxin emissions that will result in fines and possible imprisonment if these standards are violated. The Kulpmont Borough version also requires that any facility requiring an air pollution permit be at least 900 feet from a residential property.
On January 21, 2013, Peters Township (Washington County) passed an ordinance requiring continuous monitoring of mercury and dioxins from crematoria, as well as regulating a few other pollutants. See articles on this here and here.
Pennsylvania’s Air Pollution Control Act includes a section that was incorporated in state law as 35 P.S. 4012 — a statute that specifically allows local governments in the state to have stricter air pollution laws than the state or federal clean air laws. We’re making use of this to create strong local air pollution laws that create levels of accountability that air polluting corporations will not want to operate under. We hope to see these sorts of laws used in other states, where legally possible.
These types of ordinances can protect communities from other types of polluting industries such as coal facilities, ethanol biorefineries and incinerators. We’d even like to see mercury and dioxin emissions regulated for landfill gas burners, as they are worse emitters than coal plants and trash incinerators, respectively.
Through our public comments (not local laws) we managed to get the oil refinery in Philadelphia to become the first oil refinery in the U.S. to be required to use Continuous Emissions Monitors (CEMs) for measuring particulate matter emissions.
We’re tired of seeing corporations insist that their emissions are somehow “acceptable” or “safe” without even doing the continuous monitoring necessary to know what they’re putting into our air. There are now over 30 chemicals that can be monitored on a continuous basis. These continuous emissions monitoring systems are being tested and verified by EPA. See www.ejnet.org/toxics/cems/ for links to resources on this.
Some of our local ordinance efforts regulate relationships to facilities outside of their jurisdiction, such as defining who a city can contract with for waste disposal. In Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, we’re working to pass our Stop Trashing Our Air Act in Philadelphia City Council to ban the city from contracting to burn its trash, recyclables, or compostables.
If you’d like to explore using this sort of air pollution ordinance to combat facilities in your community, please contact us for details.
http://actionpa.org/ordinances/