Council Votes Tuesday on Dickerson Incinerator’s Future; Rockville Warns of Truck Traffic at Shady Grove

The Montgomery County Council is scheduled to vote at 10 a.m. Tuesday, Nov. 10, on whether the county should keep the Dickerson Resource Recovery Facility, its trash incinerator, open for the long term or close it and send the county’s trash by truck to landfills outside the county.

The Council has two competing resolutions in front of it, and the Council staff packet lists the item as final action with a vote expected. Council staff call the choice “a binary one”: keep using the incinerator for the long term, or close it in the short term and move to long-haul disposal.

• Option 1 supports keeping the incinerator open “as the County’s primary method for the disposal of solid waste.” It asks County Executive Marc Elrich to start facility planning for capital upgrades, propose a capital project, and develop a request for proposals for the plant’s long-term operation “to take effect no later than April 2031 (the current contract end date).”
• Option 2 supports closing the incinerator and moving to disposal at out-of-county landfills. It asks Elrich to send the Council an amendment to the county’s 2025-2034 solid waste plan reflecting the change.

Both resolutions list Council President Natali Fani-González as lead sponsor, and both ask Elrich for a recommendation on advanced waste processing once that procurement is finished. We covered the two resolutions when they were introduced Oct. 27, including the Department of Environmental Protection’s projection that the household trash charge would land at about the same level either way.

What is new since Oct. 27: the cost gap

Council staff answered councilmembers’ Oct. 27 questions in the packet, and most of the answers are about how much it would cost to keep the plant running.

Estimate	Amount	What the packet says
Arcadis report (2025), used in DEP’s projected charges	$356 million	Includes full boiler replacement and selective catalytic reduction (SCR) emissions controls; a 15% contingency and inflation were added
Reworld, the plant’s operator	“$200 million RRF renovation”	Reworld’s April 2026 unsolicited proposal assumes $122 million from FY28 through FY31 and another $146 million across FY32-FY41; it does not include boiler replacement or SCR
Sugarloaf Citizens Association	$800 million to $1.3 billion more than Arcadis	Estimated capital costs compiled by the association and sent to the Council

DEP staff put the order-of-magnitude difference from boiler replacement at about $100 million and from SCR at about $45 million, according to the staff answers. A 2023 Solid Waste Association of North America report quoted in the packet found that “SCR has never been retrofitted on an existing U.S. WTE facility.” DEP’s rate consultant, Raftelis, reviewed a June 2026 SWANA report and concluded the Arcadis estimate “appears generally reasonable with some contingency built in,” the packet says.

Moving the plant’s ash back to a landfill in Brunswick, Va., would add about $3.8 million to $6.0 million a year, according to DEP figures in the packet.

Elrich asked the Council to close the incinerator in a Nov. 5 letter added to the packet, which WTOP reported on Friday. “And if you are not ready to commit to closing the incinerator, please take the time to get all the information you need,” Elrich wrote.

What it means for Shady Grove and Rockville

The county now moves trash by rail from the Shady Grove Transfer Station in Derwood to the incinerator in Dickerson, according to the Council staff memo for the Oct. 27 worksession. The same memo says DEP estimates long-haul would add about 80 tractor-trailer trips to the station and 80 from it each day. The long-haul request for proposals “did not establish any time-of-day restrictions,” the memo says, and DEP does not expect trucks at the station “between 8 or 9 pm through 2 or 3 am.”

Rockville City Councilmember Adam Van Grack said in a public Facebook post Monday that closing the incinerator would move Shady Grove’s trash onto long-haul diesel trucks, and that residents of King Farm, The Farmstead and The Reed deserve answers about noise, odors and truck traffic, including “tractor-trailer operations that could begin as early as 3 am.” He said Rockville’s Mayor and Council “unanimously supported” a letter asking the county to address those impacts before deciding.

That Oct. 12 letter, which carries the signatures of Mayor Monique Ashton and all six councilmembers, asks the county to complete a traffic analysis covering “Shady Grove Road, Route 355, I-370, I-270, and other affected roadways and intersections” before choosing a preferred option. It says “the proposed 3 a.m. start time for hauling operations raises concerns about sound disturbances to adjacent communities.” The letter also says Rockville “is not asking the County to preserve or close” the incinerator. We reported on the letter Oct. 14.

Neither resolution before the Council on Tuesday sets truck routes, hauling hours or protections for neighborhoods near the Shady Grove Transfer Station. The staff answers in Tuesday’s packet do not take up Rockville’s requests; their one traffic item is a definition of intersection “level of service” (packet page ©13).

Elrich’s letter says trucks are likely in the near term under either option. “Either choice will require long-haul of trash in the short-term,” he wrote, adding that the trash “would likely have to go by truck, but it eventually could go by rail” and that keeping the incinerator “would require long-distance hauling during the facility’s major refurbishment or rebuild.” Elrich also wrote that since Nov. 2 the county has required construction and demolition debris to go to other sites, to cut truck traffic at the transfer station.

The timeline

• Reworld’s operating contract runs to April 2031. It includes about $64.5 million in short-term capital work paid for by the county, and lets the county opt out early with six months’ notice, subject to a termination settlement (packet page ©2).
• Under Option 1, the county would plan the upgrades and seek a new long-term operator, with that contract to take effect no later than April 2031. Council staff say the feasibility and final cost of the upgrade would have to be confirmed through facility planning and requests for proposals for the design and construction work.
• Under Option 2, DEP’s August planning assumptions had the incinerator closing and long-haul starting Dec. 31, 2027, based on a decision “no later than 10/31/2026” (Oct. 27 staff memo, page 31).

The packet says the Council wants to state its position in November “so that the current County Executive and his successor can initiate the necessary planning, budget, and contractual work needed to implement the decision.”

How to watch

The solid waste vote is Item 3 on the Council’s Nov. 10 agenda, set for 10 a.m. in the Council Hearing Room, 100 Maryland Ave., Rockville. It is listed as an action item, not a public hearing. The meeting streams on the Council’s website, on County Cable Montgomery (Comcast HD 996 and SD 6, RCN HD 1056 and SD 6, Verizon 30), and on the Council’s Facebook and YouTube (@MoCoCouncilMD) pages; to listen by phone, dial 240-773-3333, according to the Council’s 2026 agenda.

Still unanswered

• DEP: Under each option, what hours and routes would long-haul trucks use at the Shady Grove Transfer Station, and when?
• Council: Will the winning resolution be amended to address Rockville’s Oct. 12 requests?

We have not yet put these questions to DEP or the County Council; this story will be updated with any response.

---