News & Resources - South Baltimore Community Land Trust

The story of SBCLT begins with a group of high school students who fought the construction of what would have become the nation’s largest trash-burning incinerator in their backyards — and won.

Even though that particular incinerator wasn’t built, the neighborhoods the students defended in their fight are still bearing the brunt of Baltimore’s pollution infrastructure today.

Baltimore continues to concentrate major waste and pollution infrastructure in South Baltimore. The Quarantine Road Landfill and BRESCO incinerator—both major contributors to an ongoing federal civil rights complaint filed by South Baltimore residents—are located in South Baltimore. Both entities are up for Title V air permit renewal with the Maryland Department of the Environment this year.

As part of the permit renewal process, the state will be holding public hearings and receiving public comments on what the community (YOU!) think about these renewals. These hearings are key opportunities for community members to demand stronger health and environmental protections.

The Hearings

There are two public hearings scheduled: One for the Quarantine Road Landfill, and the other for the BRESCO Incinerator. Both will be taking place at the Curtis Bay Recreation Center at 1630 Filbert St., Baltimore, MD.

Quarantine Road Landfill permit hearing — Thursday, May 14, 2026 at 6 PM at Curtis Bay Recreation Center
BRESCO Incinerator permit hearing — Thursday, June 11, 2026 at 6 PM at Curtis Bay Recreation Center

Why this Matters

Incinerators in South Baltimore cause $100M/year in health damages statewide (from just 4 pollutants).
The landfill is a major methane source and has a long history of community concerns, including disposal of 100,000’s of potentially toxic incinerator ash per year.
Policy choices matter: As a result of our Title VI Civil Rights complaint, Baltimore officials raised landfill fees for the first time since 1993 (from ~$60 to $135/ton), and waste volumes dropped sharply—showing change is possible – demonstrating that South Baltimore communities are not sacrifice zones or dumping grounds by accident.
Yet incinerator ash is still dumped at extremely low cost (~$25/ton vs. ~$85/ton in nearby Chester, PA), raising serious concerns about safety and oversight of this material known to contain toxicants including Dioxins.

Make Your Voice Count

Let’s pack the hearings with community members who demand stronger health and environmental protections! Please put these hearing dates on your calendar and make plans to come fill the room. We hope you consider speaking about how the presence of these polluting entities affects you and your family. But even if you don’t speak, your presence in the room makes a difference.

Let us know if you plan to attend and if you’d like support preparing comments by RSVP’ing here.

RSVP TO ATTEND A HEARING

If you can’t attend the hearing in person on May 14 or June 11, you can still make your voice heard. You can submit your written comments ahead of time to the Department of Environment, and they will be entered into the public record for the permit renewal. Email your comments to sh************@******nd.gov by the following deadlines:

Written comments on the Quarantine Road Landfill need to be submitted by May 18, 2026
Written comments on the BRESCO Incinerator need to be submitted by June 15, 2026

This photo taken by SBCLT shows incinerator ash being dumped alongside mixed waste at the Quarantine Road Landfill in South Baltimore in 2025. Until stronger protections are put in place, this is the air we breathe.

Thank you to every person who submitted testimony, showed up for rallies, emailed your legislators, and talked to your friends and coworkers about the CHERISH Act.

As of this week’s crossover deadline, the CHERISH Act will not move forward in this year’s General Assembly legislative session. Maryland Matters offered detailed reporting on the changes that were made to the CHERISH Act in committee this spring.

The CHERISH Act as we knew it would have protected communities from new polluting facilities being built in already-overburdened areas of Maryland, by requiring companies to meet new permitting standards. However, our lawmakers wanted to grant exemptions… lots of them… to their favorite industries. As result, CHERISH turned into something else entirely in the amendment process.

Here’s how CHERISH was exempted out of existence:

Exemption granted to developers who volunteer to clean up properties already contaminated with hazardous substances, regardless of cleanup status or proximity to residential areas
Exemption granted to permit renewals. Do you already own a polluting facility? No problem! Just keep doing what you’re doing.
Exemption granted to facility expansions. Do you already own a polluting facility? No problem! Now you can make it bigger.
Exemption granted to animal feeding operations. Do you dream of building a factory farm? Here, have a permit!

Once we realized that CHERISH had been exempted out of existence, we knew we could no longer support it. Communities deserve a bill that functions to protect them, and doesn’t prioritize the profits of polluting industries. As a coalition, we walked away from this gutted version of the CHERISH Act so that we can come back next year to fight for the CHERISH that we deserve. Will you join us?

On March 3, 2026, the Baltimore Banner reported that the amount of garbage taken to the landfill in South Baltimore has decreased by HALF ever since the city increased their landfill fees.

In October 2025, the city’s Board of Estimates voted to increase the tipping fees at the city’s Quarantine Road Landfill in South Baltimore. This was the first time these fees have increased since 1993, and the city made this change in response to SBCLT’s landmark civil rights complaint filed with the EPA in 2024. In our complaint, we made the case that Baltimore City has violated federal civil rights law by failing to move Baltimore away from its reliance on the incinerator, which harms and pollutes low-income neighborhoods in South Baltimore. The complaint specifically called for an increase in tipping fees at Quarantine Road.

While these are early results (again, the fee increase happened in October 2025, just a few months ago), we are pleased to see that this policy change that we pushed for has had tangible effects, moving us away from dependency on harmful waste practices. We’ll continue to watch this progress in the months and years to come.

Here at SBCLT, we believe that community is the power we need to hold leaders accountable and build a new systems that renew our neighborhoods and our planet. We’ll continue listening, researching, learning, and organizing in our communities, working together toward a future of environmental justice for all.

You can read the full Banner article here: After Baltimore increased fees, less trash came to its landfill

Our very own Carlos Sanchez is quoted in the article:

Carlos Sanchez, an organizer with the South Baltimore Community Land Trust, welcomed the news of declining landfill use but criticized what he called a “troubling lack of follow-through” by the city.

Sanchez’s organization filed a federal civil rights complaint in 2024 arguing that city leaders had failed to take adequate steps to phase out incineration and landfilling, leaving low-income communities of color to bear the air pollution burden. Within months, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency opened an investigation.

In that complaint, activists called for an increase to the Quarantine Road tipping fee, and Sanchez said the recent change “demonstrates what is possible when residents organize and insist on accountability.”

Still, Sanchez has pushed for the city to stop using WIN Waste, in part to end the stream of incinerator ash to South Baltimore. That ash accounts for roughly a third of the waste dumped at the landfill each year.

Dear friends & community partners,

We are asking you to stand with us in strong support of the CHERISH Act this legislative session in Annapolis.

At the South Baltimore Community Land Trust, our commitment to this bill is rooted in lived experience. South Baltimore communities spent five years defeating a proposal to build the nation’s largest trash incinerator less than a mile from schools and homes in Curtis Bay — in a neighborhood already burdened by multiple pollution sources.

That fight revealed a glaring failure in public policy: despite overwhelming existing pollution, there were no protections to prevent new sources from being added to already overburdened communities. No cumulative impact safeguard. No line that said “enough.”

We won because the community took the lead — and a broad coalition stood behind that leadership to build the power required to stop an environmental injustice.

The CHERISH Act grows directly from that lesson. (Learn more about the bill in our January blogpost.) Community members formed the substance of this bill, defined the core principles as part of the MAJC coalition. If we want lasting protections against cumulative pollution, we must build the collective force to win again.

Here are four important ways you can help:

1. Sign your organization onto our group testimony

Add your organization’s name to our group testimony by the March 6 deadline to demonstrate to lawmakers that the CHERISH Act has broad, statewide support.

SIGN ONTO GROUP TESTIMONY

2. Submit written testimony

You may submit testimony as an individual or on behalf of your organization. Tell our lawmakers why this bill matters to you and your family! Every voice strengthens the case for this legislation.

GUIDE FOR SUBMITTING TESTIMONY

3. Attend the hearings and help us pack the room

Let’s show lawmakers that our communities are paying attention. Wear green and help us pack the room at the Senate hearing (scheduled for Tuesday, March 3) and House hearing (scheduled for Monday, March 10). If you have questions about how to get to a hearing and what to expect, email jk****@********er.org.

RSVP TO ATTEND HEARING

4. Join the rally in Annapolis on March 17

Come out, bring your network, and help amplify the call for environmental justice! We will rally at 9:30AM on Tuesday, March 17 at Lawyers Mall in Annapolis to ensure that elected officials pass the CHERISH Act.

YES, I WILL BE THERE!

This is a critical moment. The strength of this bill depends on the strength of our coalition. Your participation—whether by signing on, testifying, or showing up—will make a meaningful impact.

Please reach out to gr**@***lt.org if you have any questions.

The Henry & Jeanette Weinberg Foundation highlighted SBCLT in a blogpost on February 2, 2026 titled “What Is Community-Led Development? A Pathway to Long-Term Affordable Housing.” The blogpost focuses on community-led development as the approach that best enables communities to “strengthen their ability to plan for the long term — supporting affordability, stability, and alignment with local priorities.”

Here’s a brief excerpt:

Community-Led Development in Practice

Community-led development is not a single blueprint. It takes different forms depending on local context, community priorities, and available resources. What these approaches share is a commitment to resident leadership and stewardship.

Community land trusts are one of the most established and widely used models. This involves a nonprofit or trust holding land on behalf of a community, then renting or selling homes on the land at affordable rates. By separating land ownership from homeownership, land trusts help remove the cost of land from housing prices, preserving affordability for generations and protecting communities from displacement, particularly in expensive housing markets.

Several Foundation grantees use the community land trust model to preserve affordability and prevent displacement in ways that reflect local needs.

For example, following the 2023 Maui wildfires, Lahaina Community Land Trust aims to rebuild housing that will be affordable in perpetuity, ensuring residents can remain on the island. On Kauaʻi, two nonprofits — Kauaʻi Housing Development Corporation and Kauaʻi Habitat for Humanity — plan to develop affordable housing that will include a land trust component, as is grantee Permanently Affordable Living Hawaiʻi.

In Baltimore, South Baltimore Community Land Trust is working with residents to create permanently affordable housing without displacement. Through the renovation of vacant homes and the construction of new homes on vacant land, the organization is expanding housing opportunities while ensuring long-term affordability.H

You can read the blogpost in its entirety here:

Read the Full Article

We are grateful to the Henry & Jeanette Weinberg for their support over the years! To learn more about how YOU can support SBCLT’s vision for community-led development in Baltimore, visit our donate page.

The 449th session of Maryland’s General Assembly kicks off this week on Wednesday, January 14, 2026. We’re diving in head first for this year’s 90-day sprint to pass transformative legislation that will improve community health, combat systematic environmental devastation caused by state-enabled corporations, and move us toward a more just and equitable future for our youth.

Last year, the CHERISH Our Communities Act made its way through the General Assembly as SB 978 / HB 1484 sponsored by Sen. Clarence Lam (D12) and Del. Jazz Lewis (D24), but stalled in House and Senate committees.

Since then, we’ve continued organizing, and we’re going all-in on the bill again this year with our ever-expanding coalition of environmental justice partners. The CHERISH Our Communities Act follows examples set by lawmakers in New Jersey, New York, and Minnesota to create new permitting requirements for facilities that have major environmental impact on nearby communities. It also gives Maryland Department of Environment a clear mandate—and the authority—to consider environmental justice when making permit decisions.

Download CHERISH Factsheet Read FAQs

If the bill passes in 2026, residents in the most polluted neighborhoods across the state will be protected from new facilities that would make the pollution problem even worse. Pollution from existing facilities will also have to decrease. Meanwhile, positive development that doesn’t harm people’s health will be free to thrive.

Fun fact: CHERISH was named by Carlos, SBCLT’s very own youth outreach specialist. CHERISH = from Cumulative Harms to Environmental Restoration for Improving our Shared Health

Take action to pass CHERISH in 2026 by following the links below!

Join the CHERISH coalition Write your legislators

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Start now by filling out our Housing Application Form. We will follow up with you and do our best to support you in your journey.

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Don’t Renew the Permits! Public Hearings & Call for Comment