A group of Howard County residents seeking to stop a pilot plastics recycling plant from being built in their community received some welcome news last week.
A hearing examiner reversed a previous decision by the Howard County Department of Planning and Zoning that there had been “no violation” of county regulations for the facility.
In granting the resident group’s appeal, the hearing examiner remanded the case back to the planning and zoning department for further investigation.
“We’re grateful that the Hearing Examiner recognized what our community has said for months—that W.R. Grace’s plans to build a plastic incinerator next to our homes deserved far more than a rubber stamp,” said Aidan Morrell, one of the appellants in the case, in a statement.
Morrell and his wife Sara live in Cedar Creek, the neighborhood directly west of the W.R. Grace facility. They say emissions from the plastics recycling plant could worsen their daughter’s pulmonary condition. If the project moves forward, they said they would have to reevaluate where they live in order to ensure their family’s health and safety.
“We hope DPZ takes this opportunity to reengage with the facts and apply the kind of detailed, case-specific analysis that the zoning code demands and that our communities deserve,” Morrell said.
A spokesperson for W. R. Grace said the company plans to appeal the decision to the Howard County Board of Appeals.
“The Hearing Examiner did not rule on the merit of DPZ’s decision, and the ruling doesn’t say the project violates any laws,” a Grace spokesperson said in a statement. “It simply states that DPZ did not provide a thorough enough explanation of their decision and requires them to further articulate their determination. We respectfully disagree with the Hearing Examiner’s decision and plan to take the matter to the full Board of Appeals.”
W. R. Grace operates a nearly 55-acre facility at 7500 Grace Drive in Columbia. At this facility, the company plans to build a pilot for a plastics recycling plant, measuring 12 feet by 32 feet by 24 feet.
While a neighborhood group has protested what they call the “plastic burning project,” W. R. Grace officials argue such description is a mischaracterization of the pilot project.
The pilot would employ the use of pyrolysis, a process by which high heat breaks down a material – in this case plastics.
Product vapor would be condensed into liquid product, which would then be sent to a 3rd party environmental facility for treatment, according to the company’s application for the project.
But neighbors worry the process could release harmful gases into their communities, and that the temporary storage of liquid product at W. R. Grace – before it is transported to the treatment facility – could pose a risk for chemical spills.
W. R. Grace asserted pyrolysis would fall under a “continuing nonconforming use of research and development” for the property. The appellants disagreed.
The hearing examiner found the planning and zoning department provided insufficient explanation for their “no violation” decision.
“Particularly, the absence of evidence with regard to potential health and safety impacts of nearby residents is cause to remand if an agency is expected to consider such impacts in any given zoning analysis,” the examiner wrote.
They added that the Howard County Zoning Regulations requires “that if there is an extension, enlargement, or structural alteration to a nonconforming property, it can only be permitted if it does not have an adverse effect on vicinal properties.”
It is the duty of the county’s planning and zoning department “to thoroughly investigate and articulate clear factually supportable findings regarding the enlargement or expansion of nonconforming uses,” the examiner wrote.
Simply put: “DPZ needs to actually do its job and conduct a thorough review,” the examiner wrote.
On the question of whether the pyrolysis is a continuing nonconforming use, the hearing examiner again said DPZ’s investigation had been “woefully insufficient,” lacking field studies, interviews with neighbors, and evidence of impact on neighboring properties.
Moreover, the county’s code “establishes that nonconforming uses cannot be extended, nor can they occupy extra area within a building, and indeed no structure containing a nonconforming use can even be structurally altered. The introduction of new equipment, changes to overhead doors, concrete floors, and modification of roof steel are all independently and cumulatively changes to a nonconforming use,” according to the examiner.
The examiner said the Maryland Department of the Environment’s issuance of a permit for the project is merely “a baseline threshold of regulatory compliance” and “not a certification of actual safety, nor is it binding on the County’s zoning determinations.”
“The [Howard County Zoning Regulations] requires that any extension of a nonconforming use must not cause an adverse effect on vicinal properties, and a thorough analysis of that question should be undertaken rather than outsourced. And yet DPZ’s own statements confirm it never engaged with that question, either in writing or in practice,” the examiner wrote.
The examiner stopped short of weighing in on whether W.R. Grace provided sufficient evidence on the issue of harm to the neighborhood, saying the question was “premature in light of the legal errors committed by DPZ.”
Editor’s note: This article has been updated to add a statement from a W. R. Grace spokesperson.
Incineration is not recycling.
In describing their pyrolysis process Grace says in the article that “product vapor would be condensed into liquid product, which would then be sent to a 3rd party.” What they fail to mention is that two-thirds of this so-called vapor are NOT condensed into a liquid, but remain as a gas that is routed to an incinerator for burning and release to the atmosphere. Also, that “liquid product” is actually a flammable mix of hydrocarbons that will be warehoused in the facility prior to shipping. A dangerous proposition for residents living a few yards away.