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Montgomery County faces steep solid‑waste fee hikes to pay for incinerator repairs and planning for post‑incinerator alternatives
Summary
The Department of Environmental Protection asked the Council to increase solid‑waste service charges after identifying $28.5M in near‑term repairs at the county’s resource recovery facility and a proposed three‑year $12M/year planning/design program for an MRBT facility; council members demanded more detail and the Arcadis alternatives analysis before voting.
Montgomery County’s Department of Environmental Protection told the County Council on May 5 that the county needs a large, immediate increase in solid‑waste disposal charges to cover urgent work and planning while the county transitions away from the resource recovery (incinerator) system.
DEP Director John Monger and staff outlined three primary drivers of the proposed fee changes: inflation and contract increases for ongoing operations; a suite of short‑term capital repairs and replacements at the Resource Recovery Facility (RRF) and the county transfer station (Durwood), and a CIP amendment to begin planning and design work for a Materials Recycling & Biological Treatment (MRBT) facility. In an April amendment the Executive reduced the FY26 RRF request to $28.5 million (down from an earlier $35.5M), largely to spread and reallocate some costs; DEP said the projects remaining in FY26 are narrowly tailored to keep the system safe and permitted.
Director Monger said roughly $25.3M of the FY26 repair request is for the RRF and about $3M is for the transfer station equipment replacements; DEP noted the transfer station’s compactors and loaders are 40 years old and require replacement to avoid outages. “These projects are fundamentally necessary to maintain a viable municipal solid waste system in the short term,” Monger said.
DEP and council staff described a companion planning request of roughly $12M per year for FY26–FY28 to fund pre‑construction planning and design work for advanced processing technologies that would sort recyclables and organics out of the trash stream; DEP said the funding would support a competitive pre‑construction services procurement in mid‑2025 if Council provides the appropriation.
Several council members said they could not yet back the MRBT planning allocation without reviewing the Arcadis alternatives analysis and receiving clearer, line‑by‑line links between fee increases and specific projects. “I cannot approve fee increases not knowing the plan,” Council Member Fanny Gonzalez said. Council members pressed DEP for an itemized mapping from the three fee‑columns shown in staff materials to the discrete projects listed in the packet (circles 29–35) and asked staff to return with contract spend so far, procurement timing, and a public briefing on the Arcadis report before any final fee vote.
DEP and OMB pointed to a small offset: electricity sales from the RRF have historically generated ~$10M/year that reduce net charges; recent state changes to renewable energy credits will reduce future credit revenue and affect FY27 forward estimates.
Next steps: council staff and DEP agreed to provide the full Arcadis alternatives analysis to the full Council and to deliver an itemized cost‑to‑fee mapping and procurement timeline ahead of the Council’s scheduled fee action in mid‑May.
