Residents of a low-income Kansas City, Kansas, neighborhood continue to organize in an effort to stop an industrial waste processing and recycling facility from opening next to their homes and near an elementary school.
A month ago, city planning commissioners delayed a vote on permitting the facility.
They told the company behind it to hold more meetings with the public and environmental groups that are concerned about the facility causing pollution and harming people’s health.
The company, New Jersey-based Reworld, has not done that in the weeks since.
Now the City Planning Commission for the Unified Government of Wyandotte County and Kansas City, Kansas, again faces the question of whether to grant a special use permit. The matter appears on its agenda for Monday evening.
“People just ignore the community,” said Ana Ramos, a resident of the Armourdale neighborhood where Reworld wants to operate. “At this point, the community wants to talk about that — it’s wrong being treated like that.”
Ramos was attending a gathering of residents late last week, organized by Rise for Environmental Justice, a neighborhood environmental group that goes by RiSE4EJ.
Reworld told the Kansas News Service it held a public meeting back in July, as required by city rules, before reaching the planning commission the first time. It also gave a presentation at the Armourdale Renewal Association that month.
“Reworld is committed to transparency and open dialogue with the community,” according to a company statement to the Kansas News Service. “We are fully committed to continuing this dialogue.”
The company has commissioned “a comprehensive traffic study and an independent environmental and community impact report” that “will confirm that the facility will not adversely affect the community,” the statement said.
Reworld has said it won’t process any waste at the site that is defined as hazardous under state or federal laws and it will process the waste indoors.
Beto Lugo-Martinez, with RiSE4EJ, said commissioners were clear in August when they instructed Reworld to do more to meet with the public.
“We haven’t seen a notice anywhere,” he told the gathering of two dozen residents. “The other thing that they haven’t done is shared any information. We’ve asked for presentations, PDFs, the slides, whatever.”
“Why wouldn’t they be transparent?” said Lugo-Martinez, the group's executive director.
The City Planning Commission also instructed Reworld last month to meet with the Sierra Club’s Kansas chapter. But it never reached out to the Sierra Club, State Director Zack Pistora said.
Pistora said the company not abiding by the commission’s instructions would raise red flags.
“It’s hard for me to think that they’re taking this project very seriously,” he said.
Sierra Club has concerns about the project, but feels that Reworld needs first and foremost to meet with the Armourdale residents and their neighborhood environmental group, RiSE4EJ, to answer their questions.
Neighbors consider Reworld’s July meeting insufficient because they say the company held it at 2 p.m. on a workday, miles away from where the residents live, making it harder for them to attend.
Reworld did not answer a question from the Kansas News Service about the time and address of the meeting.
Betty Paz, a resident of Armourdale for 50 years, lives across the street from the site that Reworld has leased for its facility. She rattled off a few of her concerns at RiSE’s gathering last week.
“Air quality, the odor, the noise, the traffic for the kids,” she said. “To the kids, that’s just another street in our neighborhood – but the trucks on there!”
Armourdale falls in the bottom one-tenth of U.S. census tracts for life expectancy. It ranks nearly as poorly for asthma. Air pollution is a long-standing problem in the area.
Residents want to work toward cleaner air. This site would bring heavy truck traffic – more than 1,200 trips in and out on a typical weekday, according to a company document reported by the Kansas Reflector. The location would operate from 6 a.m. to 10:30 p.m.
Armourdale’s elementary school is less than half a mile from the site.
“The kids are out there for recess out in the open,” she said. “I don't understand why they would’ve picked that area.”
Chaela Eden, Paz’s granddaughter, also came to the meeting.
“They’re trying to move in right in our backyard,” she said.
Details of the proposal
The proposal involves trucking industrial waste and commercial garbage from other plants and companies to 808 South 14th Street in Armourdale.
That building is zoned for heavy industrial use.
Reworld has said the waste will stay within the building during processing, and that the processing allows some of the waste to be recycled into fuel for cement kilns, keeping it out of landfills.
The company said examples of the industrial waste and commercial garbage include:
- Rags and absorbents that have been used in industrial processes
- Sludges from manufacturing processes
- Coolants
- Surfactants such as soaps and detergents
- Latex paint
- Water left over from industrial processes
Reworld said it will treat the industrial water before sending it to the local wastewater plant.
It also said it will take in recyclables from other companies, such as cardboard, plastic and rubber.
The company said it will not take in anything biomedical, radioactive or defined by law as hazardous and that it must comply with local, state and federal rules and permits.
“Reworld values both the local Armourdale community and broader Kansas City, KS community,” the company’s statement said.
More resident concerns
RiSE4EJ and its volunteers have spent more than a month gathering all the information they could about Reworld and spreading word about its proposal by knocking on doors.
Estela Najera, a neighbor who lives just blocks from the site, said that’s how she and her husband learned about the proposed facility.
“It’s going to affect us in many ways, particularly our health,” said Najera, who has lived in the neighborhood since the mid-1980s.
Flooding is a problem in Armourdale, she said, and if any problematic substances were to spill, the rain could easily spread it.
The company told the City Planning Commission last month that it will safeguard the building from street flooding by building a berm.
“Why don’t they take (the facility) farther away?” Najera said. “We’re in limbo because we don’t know what’s going to happen. The situation is worrying.”
Najera spoke in Spanish. She came to the gathering for RiSE’s bilingual presentation about the project. A bilingual volunteer then helped her and her husband write a letter in English to the planning commission expressing their concerns.
Residents said fewer than 40 people received written notice of Reworld’s plan to site a waste processing plant in Armourdale. Some questioned the wisdom of a city rule that meant the company only had to notify homes within 200 feet of the property.
The distrust that residents expressed for Reworld hinges partly on the company’s record and partly on what they see as its failure to appear in the community and engage meaningfully with neighbors.
Reworld was formerly called Covanta. The Kansas Reflector reported last month that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has previously criminally investigated Covanta for “alleged improprieties in the recording and reporting of emissions data.” It said the company settled the investigation.
The facility will bring 25 jobs that pay on average $55,000 a year, Reworld told the City Planning Commission last month. Local economic development leaders spoke in favor of the project at that meeting, the Reflector reported, but others aren’t convinced.
“ We don’t believe that that’s really economic development for Wyandotte County,” said Katie Rico, who lives in nearby Argentine.
It’s not that many jobs, she said, and it’s not clear to her that any of them are entry-level. The company hasn’t said it will hire locals for those positions.
The Kansas News Service asked Reworld for about this but did not receive an answer.
The proposed site is less than a mile from important amenities in Argentine, Rico said, like a grocery store and a park.
“ We’re worried about the additional trucking that’s going to be coming through our neighborhood because of all the bridges being closed” for construction, Rico said. “We already have trucks coming through Argentine to get to Kansas Avenue.”
A few residents – White and Hispanic alike – said the situation strikes them as a form of racism. They felt their area was selected because it is disadvantaged, many people don’t speak English and the area could be seen as having little leverage to push back against an industrial project.
Armourdale falls in the 10% of U.S. census tracts that have the lowest-income populations.
Ramos said anyone who spends time going door to door like she has will see why the news of a potential waste processing site hits hard. People are trying to improve their community, she said.
“I saw many people making effort, getting their houses better,” she said. “They are working for Armourdale looking good. And families (would) like to live a better life.”
Celia Llopis-Jepsen is the environment reporter for the Kansas News Service and host of the environmental podcast Up From Dust. You can follow her on Bluesky or email her at celia (at) kcur (dot) org.
The Kansas News Service is a collaboration of KCUR, Kansas Public Radio, KMUW and High Plains Public Radio focused on health, the social determinants of health and their connection to public policy.
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