Precedents worth knowing
How Communities Elsewhere Defeated Plants Like This
Comparable incinerators and gas pipelines have been stopped elsewhere by state permit denials, expired permits, and developers missing their own deadlines. In the documented cases below, none was defeated by a non-binding town referendum, and two projects ended after the developer already held a federal certificate.
Plainfield is not the first community to face a large waste-to-energy plant. The proposed SMART Technology Systems gasification facility remains a proposal under active review by state agencies; no final permit decision has been issued.67 Residents reasonably ask whether a project of this kind has ever actually been turned back. It has, more than once. What follows are six documented cases from four states, each tied where possible to the governing regulatory decision or court ruling and corroborated by an independent report. Each is a comparable precedent, not a prediction. Facility types and locations differ; what transfers is the legal and administrative mechanism, not a promised outcome.
Case one · New York
Constitution Pipeline: a state water-quality denial the courts upheld
The Constitution Pipeline was a proposed 124-mile interstate natural gas pipeline designed to move roughly 650,000 dekatherms per day from northeastern Pennsylvania into New York. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission issued its certificate of public convenience and necessity in December 2014.18
The project still required a Clean Water Act Section 401 water-quality certification from the state. On April 22, 2016, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation denied that certification, finding the company had not supplied an adequate stream-by-stream analysis of pipeline burial depth for the roughly 250 New York streams the route would cross, submitting a site-specific analysis for only 21 of them.2 The developer challenged the denial. In August 2017 the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit upheld the state, and on April 30, 2018 the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the appeal.2
Unable to obtain the state permit, the developers ended the project on February 24, 2020, after an eight-year effort.18 A federal certificate did not override a state’s authority over its own waters.
The transferable mechanism: a state can deny the Clean Water Act Section 401 water-quality certification on the record, and that denial can be upheld in court even against a federally certificated project.2
Case two · New Jersey
PennEast: a Supreme Court win that a state permit outlasted
PennEast was a proposed interstate natural gas pipeline from Pennsylvania into New Jersey. It held a FERC certificate, but New Jersey withheld the state approvals it needed, including the Section 401 water-quality certification and freshwater wetlands permits, which the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection declined to issue.1617
On June 29, 2021, in PennEast Pipeline Co. v. New Jersey, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5–4 for the developer on the separate question of eminent domain, holding that a FERC certificate holder could condemn state-owned land.1 The company won that case. It did not matter. Less than three months later, in September 2021, PennEast ended the project, stating that it had not obtained the New Jersey water-quality certification and wetlands permits the project required.1617
The transferable mechanism: the state water and wetlands permits are a distinct barrier. A developer can prevail on federal questions, and even at the Supreme Court, and still be unable to build without the state’s Clean Water Act approvals.116
Case three · Massachusetts and New Hampshire
Northeast Energy Direct: sustained opposition, then a withdrawal at FERC
The Northeast Energy Direct project, proposed by Kinder Morgan subsidiary Tennessee Gas Pipeline, would have run several hundred miles across New York, Massachusetts and New Hampshire, with a market segment costed around $5 billion. The company filed its FERC application in November 2015 (Docket No. CP16-21).20
The route drew sustained, organized opposition across dozens of towns, including the No Fracked Gas in Mass coalition, which contested the application, the eminent-domain surveys, and the claimed regional need.12 On April 22, 2016 the company suspended work and asked FERC to take no further action, and it withdrew the application the following month, stating it had not secured sufficient contractual commitments from New England customers to proceed.1220
The transferable mechanism: multi-town, multi-year opposition that contests need at every step raises a project’s cost and uncertainty. A developer that cannot demonstrate committed demand may withdraw before any permit is ever decided.12
Case four · Maryland
Frederick County: permits issued, project ended anyway
Frederick and Carroll Counties jointly proposed a roughly 1,500-ton-per-day waste-to-energy incinerator in Frederick County, budgeted near $471 million, to be operated by Wheelabrator. The Maryland Department of the Environment issued its final permit determinations on February 21, 2014, for a plant designed to produce about 55 megawatts gross and 45 megawatts net.4
Holding the permits did not save the project. Carroll County withdrew from the partnership in April 2014, undermining the plant’s economics. On November 20, 2014, after roughly a decade of local opposition, the Frederick Board of County Commissioners voted 3–2 to cancel the contract and exit the permits.1314
The transferable mechanism: an issued permit is not the end of the fight. A project can still collapse when a financial partner leaves and elected officials decline to proceed.1314
Case five · Baltimore, Maryland
Curtis Bay: a permit that expired because construction stalled
Energy Answers proposed the Fairfield Renewable Energy incinerator in the Curtis Bay neighborhood of South Baltimore, less than a mile from schools. At 4,000 tons of waste per day it would have been the largest municipal-waste incinerator in the United States, permitted to emit up to 1,000 pounds of lead per year. The Maryland Public Service Commission issued its Certificate of Public Convenience and Necessity on August 6, 2010.9
Under the federal Prevention of Significant Deterioration rule, an air permit becomes invalid if construction is discontinued for 18 months or more.5 Construction at Fairfield stopped in November 2013 and did not resume; the air-quality authorization lapsed on May 1, 2015. After a seven-year community campaign, residents and the Environmental Integrity Project filed a Clean Air Act notice of intent to sue on February 10, 2016.910 On March 17, 2016 the Maryland Department of the Environment determined that, by operation of law, the certificate’s air-quality provisions had expired, ending the project.1019
The transferable mechanism: permits carry construction deadlines. Sustained pressure that delays a developer past those deadlines can void the permit by operation of law, without any new vote.59
Case six · Chester, Pennsylvania
Chester: the environmental-justice legal tool residents established
Chester is included for precision, not as a clean win. It is important to state plainly what was and was not achieved. Chester Residents Concerned for Quality Living, led by Zulene Mayfield, challenged a Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection permit for a Soil Remediation Services facility in Chester, a predominantly Black community that already hosted a cluster of waste facilities.311
On December 30, 1997, in Chester Residents Concerned for Quality Living v. Seif, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit held for the first time that private residents may sue under the Environmental Protection Agency’s Title VI disparate-impact regulations over a state pollution permit, without having to prove intentional discrimination.3 The U.S. Supreme Court granted review but then vacated the case as moot in 1998, after the specific Soil Remediation Services facility at issue did not go forward.11
The honest caveat: Chester’s largest waste facility, the incinerator now operated as Reworld (formerly Covanta), remains in operation. Chester residents did not shut that plant down. What the case produced was a durable legal tool, the recognition that communities can raise disparate-impact civil-rights claims against pollution permits, and the defeat of the particular facility that prompted the suit.311
At a glance
Six cases, and what actually decided each
These were not identical facilities to the Plainfield proposal. They ranged from interstate gas pipelines to mass-burn incinerators to a soil-treatment facility. The mechanisms that decided them, however, travel across facility types.
| Project | State | Type | Outcome | Decisive mechanism |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Constitution Pipeline | NY | Gas pipeline | Ended 202018 | State Section 401 water-quality denial, upheld in court2 |
| PennEast | NJ / PA | Gas pipeline | Ended 202116 | State water and wetlands permits denied; survived even a Supreme Court win1 |
| Northeast Energy Direct | MA / NH / NY | Gas pipeline | Withdrawn 201620 | No committed demand; developer withdrew amid sustained opposition12 |
| Frederick County WTE | MD | Trash incinerator | Ended 201413 | Partner withdrew; commissioners voted to exit the permits14 |
| Fairfield / Curtis Bay | MD | Trash incinerator | Permit voided 201610 | Missed 18-month construction deadline; permit expired by law5 |
| Chester (Soil Remediation Services) | PA | Waste facility | Facility not opened; civil-rights precedent set3 | Title VI disparate-impact suit; permit did not proceed11 |
The technology’s own record
When gasification plants fail on their own
Every case above is a project that people turned back. This one is different, and it answers a claim common to proposals like Plainfield’s: that gasification is a proven, low-risk technology. On its own, without a single protester, this class of plant has a documented record of failing commercially and technically after it was financed, and in several cases after it was built. The four failures below are named, dated, and carry public dollar figures drawn from company statements, from news reporting, and, in one case, from a formal government audit.
| Plant / operator | Location | Reported cost & scale | What happened |
|---|---|---|---|
| Air Products, Tees Valley plasma gasification | Teesside, England | $900M–$1.0B pre-tax charge; two plants designed for 700,000 tons/yr | A Fortune 500 operator abandoned both plants in April 2016 after the first could not run reliably; the second was halted in November 2015 with about 700 layoffs.2115 |
| Enerkem, Edmonton waste-to-ethanol facility | Edmonton, Alberta | ~$80M plant, 25-year lease from 2010; billed as world-first commercial-scale | Shut down in January 2024, roughly eleven years before the lease was to end, after producing about 5 million litres against a 36-million-litre annual target.22 |
| Plasco Energy Group, Trail Road demonstration plant | Ottawa, Ontario | ~$400M in private funding over roughly a decade | Missed repeated financing deadlines and filed for creditor protection in early 2015; the Trail Road plant was dismantled and the company’s intellectual property was later bought back for $1.23 |
| Caithness Heat and Power | Wick, Scotland | GBP 13.8M cost to the council (a later figure of GBP 11.5M) | A formal government audit found the scheme “failed because the company procured ‘experimental’ and high risk gasification technology which could not be commissioned successfully.”8 |
These plants were not identical to the Plainfield proposal, and each carried its own mix of engineering and financing problems. What they share is the part the “proven technology” framing leaves out: municipal-waste gasification and plasma-gasification plants at commercial scale have repeatedly failed to run as promised, including in the hands of a Fortune 500 operator and a purpose-built city partnership. The largest single write-off, Air Products’ Tees Valley plants, reached $900 million to $1 billion.21 A UK waste-industry briefing catalogs ten such gasification and pyrolysis failures over 2010 to 2016 alone.15
The transferable point: a claim that this technology is proven and low-risk should be weighed against its own commercial record. Plants of this class have been financed, built, and then written off or shut down years early, on their own, without any local opposition at all.821
What this means for Plainfield
What Plainfield can honestly take from this
- These were different facility types than the proposed Plainfield gasification plant. The lessons are about legal process and pressure points, not a promise of the same result.
- None of these projects was stopped by a town referendum. In each case the decision rested with a state agency, a court, or the developer’s own board.
- A state permit denial can defeat a federally certificated project. Both Constitution and PennEast held FERC certificates and were ended after states withheld Clean Water Act approvals.216
- Deadlines are leverage. The Baltimore incinerator’s permit expired by operation of law after an 18-month construction gap.59
- An issued permit is not the last word. Frederick County held its permits and the project still ended when a partner left and officials declined to proceed.413
- Sustained public participation matters. Organized, multi-town opposition contributed to a withdrawal at FERC and established a lasting civil-rights tool in Chester.312
Questions and answers
Common questions
If not by town votes, how were these projects stopped?
By state permit denials, expired permits, lost financial partners, and developers withdrawing for lack of committed demand. State agencies, courts, and company boards, not local referendums, decided each outcome.216
Can a state permit denial really stop a project that already has federal approval?
Yes. Both the Constitution and PennEast pipelines held Federal Energy Regulatory Commission certificates and were ended after states withheld their Clean Water Act Section 401 water-quality certifications. PennEast even won at the U.S. Supreme Court in June 2021 and still ended that September.12
What is the “18-month rule” that ended the Baltimore incinerator?
Under the federal Prevention of Significant Deterioration rule (40 C.F.R. 52.21(r)(2)), an air permit becomes invalid if construction is discontinued for 18 months or more. The Fairfield incinerator’s authorization lapsed on May 1, 2015, and Maryland declared it expired in March 2016.510
Did any of these communities win by referendum?
No. None of these outcomes came from a binding town vote. That is the central lesson: the leverage lay in state permits, deadlines, financing, and organized public participation.
Is the Plainfield plant the same as the projects on this page?
No. The facility types and locations differ, and each case is a precedent, not a prediction. What transfers is the legal and administrative mechanism, not a guaranteed result.
Isn’t gasification a proven, low-risk technology?
Its commercial record at scale is mixed at best. Air Products wrote off $900 million to $1 billion on two Tees Valley plasma-gasification plants it abandoned in 2016; Enerkem’s Edmonton waste-to-ethanol plant closed in 2024, about eleven years early; Plasco’s Ottawa plant reached creditor protection in 2015 after roughly $400 million; and a Scottish government audit found the Caithness plant “could not be commissioned successfully.”821
See how to be heard → · How Connecticut towns turned back plants →