Covanta caught out

The Western Mail features an article entitled: Incinerator giant hit by states’ fines, describing how:

[Covanta] the firm behind a huge incinerator planned for South Wales has been fined hundreds of thousands of dollars in the US for emitting cancer-causing chemicals from similar plants.

…news of the company’s track record of law-breaking in the States has horrified local residents in Merthyr, where it would next to the controversial Ffos-y-Fran opencast coal mine.

Covanta was fined:

• For emitting excessive amounts of carbon monoxide from its plant at Alexandria, and for failing to submit environmental reports (2003).
• [Repeatedly fined] for releasing excessive amounts of dioxin and other toxic emissions.
• For  illegal emissions of toxic air pollutants in Massachusetts.
• For toxic nickel emissions from a municipal waste incinerator in Pennsylvania (2008).
• For failing Indiana’s particulate emissions standards.

Elizabeth Condron, who mounted an unsuccessful legal challenge against the mine, is quoted as saying:

How can we be expected to have confidence in a company that has broken the law on numerous occasions in America? We are already suffering the effects of the mine. Now we have another battle on our hands to stop this going ahead.

R Jones, Chairman, Swansea Friends of the Earth, has written to the paper expressing the concerns of many:

It is with concern that we hear that a huge incinerator plant is being planned near to the Trecatti Tip and the Ffos y Fran opencast mine (“£400m waste incinerator ‘sprung’ on community blighted by mine,” Jan 29).

The people of Merthyr are, it seems, being singled out yet again for an environmentally unfriendly development. It appears that Covanta Energy, a US-owned company, is behind the project.

In October last year the American branch of the company was fined $45,600 by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection for exceeding the permissible limits for emissions of toxic nickel and related compounds.

Incineration in Wales does not have a good reputation either. The company behind the Crymlyn Burrows incinerator went bankrupt leaving Neath Port Talbot council with the liability of running the plant and leading to them launching a £54m lawsuit against their advisers.

The Crymlyn Burrows plant was recently issued with a site warning, by the Environment Agency, following a breach of permitted pollution limits and was warned that it could be liable for prosecution.

Merthyr badly needs jobs but it needs good, healthy and clean jobs.

Having a reputation for being the dumping ground of Wales is not going to encourage good employers to want to set up in the town.

Latest development
Labour Board in U.S. to Issue Nationwide Complaint against Covanta Energy

16th February 2009: Braintree, Massachusetts, USA – Utility Workers Union of America Local 369 announced today that the National Labor Relations Board has authorized a complaint charging Covanta Energy with violating U.S. labour law at more than 50 Covanta locations across the country.

The complaint is based on a charge filed by the Union challenging numerous illegal work rules maintained by Covanta in its employee handbook, including rules threatening to terminate employees for providing any information about the company to government investigators, the news media, or other “outside representatives.”

The NLRB complaint will cover all U.S. facilities where Covanta has distributed the illegal work rules, including its municipal waste incinerator in Rochester, Massachusetts where workers are represented by Local 369, and also at the company’s other U.S. facilities.

“The Board’s decision to issue a nationwide complaint against Covanta confirms our charge that this renegade company runs roughshod over workers’ rights,” stated Gary P. Sullivan, President of UWUA Local 369. “We intend to challenge Covanta’s illegal conduct at every turn.”

Covanta operates waste incinerators and related facilities throughout the U.S. and around the globe. Workers at the Massachusetts facility voted for representation by Local 369 in May 2008, but have been unable to win a first union contract because of unfair company tactics – including the illegal work rules.

The NLRB complaint also challenges a Covanta rule prohibiting solicitation or distribution of “unauthorized” material anywhere on “company property” or on “company time” – a type of anti-union rule declared illegal under U.S. labour law for more than sixty years. Other Covanta policies charged under the complaint include rules prohibiting employees from discussing their wages with each other, or from wearing any “political slogans” at work.

“It is outrageous that any company in this day and age would try to impose these clearly illegal work rules,” observed Sullivan. “We want Covanta employees to know that our union will stand up for their rights, not only in Massachusetts but at every other Covanta location.”

UWUA Local 369 represents over 3,000 working men and women in the utility and related industries throughout Massachusetts, and is affiliated with the Utility Workers Union of America, AFL-CIO. More information concerning the Union’s campaign for justice for Covanta workers is available at www.cjcw.org. The UWUA will post the NLRB complaint against Covanta at the web site as soon as it is available.