Zero Burn Coalition

Hennepin County says the HERC trash burner is safe.

But a study they point to was funded by the trash incinerator industry's own trade group 🤔

And the county official who oversees the burner, David McNary, is that group's secretary-treasurer.

That isn't oversight. It's a conflict of interest.

HUGE NEWS: The incinerator industry says burning trash destroys PFAS. The The Guardian just reported on the indepedent science that proves that's false.

Who do you trust to keep us safe?

Henn. County Commrs: follow the science. Close HERC.

We're heartbroken for our labor comrades, coalition members, and everyone grieving this tragic loss. Please support Khalid's family if you're able.

Donate to Supporting Khalid's young family after tragic death. , organized by Dane Ryan MACE, the staff union of the frontline workers of AFSCME Council 5 MN … Dane Ryan needs your support for Supporting Khalid's young family after tragic death.

“...a federal lawsuit filed by Earthjustice and the Environmental Integrity Project has confirmed what communities like ours have known for decades: the EPA and agencies like it have been captured by the industries they were created to regulate. The rules are written to protect the polluters. The communities breathing the pollution are an afterthought,” said Nazir Khan, a member of the coalition and co-founder of the Minnesota Environmental Justice Table."

George Floyd should still be alive today.

Six years after Minneapolis police murdered him at 38th and Chicago, we honor his memory. We say his name.

We spent today at the Rise and Remember Festival at George Floyd Square, keeping his memory alive and fighting for the world he should have grown old in.

Rest in power, Big Floyd.

BREAKING: MINNESOTA ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE TABLE RESPONDS TO LAWSUIT OVER TRUMP EPA'S FAILURE TO PROTECT COMMUNITIES FROM TRASH INCINERATOR POLLUTION

Lawsuit arrives as Minneapolis community marks one month since hunger strike demanding county action to close HERC incinerator.

MINNEAPOLIS -- Earthjustice and the Environmental Integrity Project filed suit against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency this week, arguing that the federal government has defied the Clean Air Act by setting emission standards for municipal trash incinerators far weaker than the law requires and far weaker than what modern pollution controls can achieve -- and that the Trump EPA has no plans to change that.

The HERC MPCA permit that County Commissions and staff have lauded as proving it is safe was found in 2008 to be faulty under the Clean Air Act. Improvements ordered by a federal court were finally proposed by the U.S. EPA in 2024 and would have dramatically reduced harm from incinerators for particulate matter (PM) and ozone alone by an average of about $12 million per year. But the Trump Administration watered them down.

The lawsuit names mercury, lead, arsenic, and dioxins -- cancer-causing pollutants with no safe level of exposure -- as documented harms being absorbed by communities living near these facilities. It calls what is happening a failure of law, a failure of regulatory will, and an environmental justice crisis.

The Minnesota Environmental Justice Table says the lawsuit describes exactly what Minneapolis has experienced for 37 years at the HERC trash burner.

Nationwide, nearly 8 in 10 trash incinerators are located in Black, Indigenous, and low-income communities. The HERC trash burner sits in Minneapolis, a five-minute walk from Heritage Park in North Minneapolis, next to Target Field, near several homeless shelters and schools -- and is an unwelcome surprise to residents of new developments in the North Loop who may not have known what was burning nearby. Its pollution doesn't stop at the fenceline. The facility's emissions affect neighborhoods across Minneapolis, falling hardest on those closest to it.

Nearly one month ago, Natasha Villanueva, Joshua Lewis, and Nazir Khan ended a 12-day hunger strike after the Hennepin County Board refused to call a vote on closure. On Day 12, Khan stood before the Board and read from a national letter drafted by The Ecology Center in Michigan and endorsed by more than 100 organizations, including almost every major environmental justice (EJ) organization in the United States: "Across the United States, the fight against waste incineration has become one of the defining environmental justice battles of our time…You cannot claim climate or racial justice leadership while continuing to operate the county's largest polluter. You cannot claim to be progressive while allowing Black, brown, and immigrant communities to continue bearing the burden of this pollution. Your continued support for incineration is not a progressive position."

"What Earthjustice is arguing in federal court is the reality people in Minneapolis have been living since 1989," said Khan, co-founder and Executive Director of the Minnesota Environmental Justice Table. "Federal regulators failed these communities. Now a federal court will hold them accountable. Hennepin County doesn't have to wait for a court order. The Board has the power to act today. Every day they delay is another day our neighbors pay with their health."

Independent scientific analysis by former EPA risk assessment scientist Doug Gurian-Sherman found that communities closest to the HERC trash burner face several times higher cancer and non-cancer risk than those farther away -- a finding the county had buried in its own data. A forthcoming report from Gurian-Sherman will identify significant methodological flaws and likely harmful PFAS “forever chemical” emissions in a recent engineering study commissioned to assess incinerator emissions, raising additional serious questions about whether regulators have ever had an accurate picture of the harm this facility is causing.

The HERC trash burner is the biggest polluter and single largest source of nitrogen oxide pollution in Hennepin County, responsible for 25 percent of county NOx emissions across 223 facilities. Independent analysis estimates the burner causes at least 1-2 premature deaths per year and at least $24 million in annual health damages from particulate emissions alone.

"Leadership means refusing to hide behind weak federal standards -- especially those shaped by the Trump EPA. If Hennepin County truly believes in protecting its residents and advancing racial and environmental justice, it must act now to close the HERC trash burner. Waiting for the Trump administration is not leadership. It is a failure of responsibility. Our communities deserve bold, immediate action that puts their health and well-being first." said Khan.

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About Zero Burn Coalition & Minnesota Environmental Justice Table

The Zero Burn Coalition represents more than 70 organizations convened by the Minnesota Environmental Justice Table (MNEJT) and working to shut down the HERC trash burner and build the zero-waste future that HERC blocks. MNEJT has a record of winning: it helped build the Frontline Communities Protection Coalition and lead passage of Minnesota's landmark 2023 Cumulative Impacts Law, which requires the state to account for the compounding pollution burdens carried by frontline communities. MNEJT successfully advocated to remove HERC's recovered energy from being counted as renewable in the 2023 100% Clean Electricity Law. It blocked $26 million in state funding for a Dirty Materials Recovery Facility (Dirty MRF) in Brooklyn Park that would have burdened another working-class community of color and that the County was pushing for with no community engagement. It is currently developing legislation to strengthen landfill standards -- requiring stronger emissions monitoring, methane capture, and groundwater protections. Through the Minnesota Zero Waste Coalition, MNEJT has helped lead policy development on organics diversion, extended producer responsibility, and reducing single-use plastics, building the upstream systems that make a Zero-Waste future possible.

The 2026 Minnesota legislative session has ended. Here's what we accomplished together:

Rep. Fue Lee (DFL-59A) and Rep. Samantha Sencer-Mura (DFL-63A) introduced HF 4197/SF 4578, the HERC Accountability Act, with Sen. Omar Fateh (DFL-62) carrying it in the Senate. The bill would require real-time monitoring of 15 pollutants, adopt the Biden EPA's proposed emissions standards into Minnesota law, and cap HERC's burning capacity at 274,000 tons per year (75% of its current capacity). We had strong conversations with legislators and expect the bill to be reintroduced and heard next session.

We also blocked Hennepin County's attempt to spend $26 million in state funds to build a Dirty MRF in Brooklyn Park — for the second year in a row. Not a zero-waste solution. No meaningful community process. Blocked.

Several coalition members also worked within the MN Zero Waste Coalition to defend and develop true zero waste policies. Learn more about that here: https://mnzerowastecoalition.org/our-priorities.

None of this happened on its own. It happened because people showed up — at the Capitol, in their districts, at the county, in their cities. Because you lobbied legislators, because community members testified, because this coalition refused to let Hennepin County quietly expand the waste corridor while pretending to plan for closure.

And we did all of it while three of our own were on a 12-day hunger strike putting their bodies on the line for clean air.

This is what a movement looks like. And we are just getting started.

In solidarity,
Zero Burn Coalition