Environmental regulators in Maryland are demanding that the Wheelabrator Baltimore incinerator cut its emissions of air pollutants by one-fifth.

Wheelabrator Baltimore is the city’s largest source of air pollution, according to reports. And officials are requiring that the facility reduce its output of nitrogen oxides by 200 tons a year.

According to The Baltimore Sun, Maryland Environment Secretary Ben Grumbles said the state is being more lenient on the Baltimore incinerator because the regulations “translate to more work” for the facility, which opened in 1985.

The Baltimore Sun has more:

Maryland environmental regulators are demanding that a Baltimore trash incinerator cut its emissions of one harmful air pollutant by about one-fifth and study whether it can clean its exhaust even more aggressively.

The Wheelabrator Baltimore incinerator, the city’s single largest source of industrial air pollution, would be required to reduce its output of nitrogen oxides by about 200 tons a year under a regulation proposed Friday. The compounds contribute to smog and irritate the respiratory system, increasing the likelihood of lung diseases and stroke.

But the incinerator, which burns most of the region’s trash, is not being held to as stringent a standard as a similar facility in Montgomery County because it’s older and less sophisticated. The state is not requiring Wheelabrator to install more modern pollution controls, instead allowing it to tinker with its existing technology at an expected cost of about $250,000 a year to its owner, New Hampshire-based Wheelabrator Technologies.

Read the full article here.