Last month the Brandon Scott administration shocked the city with a plan to sell the Sisson Street trash transfer facility to a developer and move the operation to a site beside the Jones Falls waterway.

This week the mayor backed down.

He disclosed at a press availability that the relocation idea had been demoted from a well-oiled mayoral initiative to the ponderous subject of a future task force to be composed of City Council members, neighborhood associations and city government representatives.

“Together they will consider all options for the future of the transfer station, including keeping it where it is, moving it or simply closing it,” Scott announced.

The task force he is appointing “will make a recommendation to me by December,” Scott said.

That’s a big change.

Under the original timeline unveiled by his chief of staff, Calvin Young , the 2840-2842 Sisson Street property already would have been sold for development by December.

“This is a little bit of an aggressive timeline,” Young declared proudly at the August 11 meeting where the original plan was presented essentially as a done deal.

The gathering was attended by top city department heads and staffers, some handing out snack boxes and water bottles, others stationed beside displays showing maps of the new garbage and recycling facility at the Potts & Callahan property at 2901 Falls Road.

Also in attendance were two City Council members, Odette Ramos and Jermaine Jones, as the administration laid out a legislative glide path for the relocation plan.

The timeline showed the ordinance of sale zooming through the City Council and landing on Scott’s desk for his signature on October 31.

The last step on the timeline was dated years 2026-27 denoting the physical relocation of the facility, formally named the “Northwest Citizens’ Convenience Center,” to Falls Road.

A week later, Bill 25-0094, authorizing the sale of the property, was introduced to the City Council, after a murky period initially during which the bill was missing from the Council’s online agenda.

Amid Resistance, a Recalibration

If this were a podcast, inserted here would be the scratchy sound of the needle being abruptly lifted up from the LP.

City Hall’s plan was met with near universal disapproval from a broad array of groups and individuals – ranging from environmental groups like Friends of the Jones Falls and Blue Water Baltimore to commercial businesses along the Falls Road corridor.

Also furious were academic leaders and civic organizations who had worked for years toward improving the bike and pedestrian path along Falls Road and making the Jones Falls waterway a safe, attractive and scenic urban park.

Neighborhood leaders, meanwhile, howled over the proposed traffic diversion.

Falls Road was to be closed to through traffic between the 29th Street Bridge and Mill No. 1 in Hampden.

Further south, drivers would need to thread their way to Lafayette Avenue in Station North, then come up Falls Road past the Baltimore Streetcar Museum to the new drop-off site. To exit, they would return the same way they came.

Also feeling the heat was Ramos, who was confronted in Council chambers by opponents, who decried the idea of storing garbage and household hazardous waste on a floodplain, and demanded a closer look at alternative sites.

State Senator Dalya Attar announced her opposition to the proposal.

Yesterday, City Council President Zeke Cohen confirmed that plan was off the legislative fast track.

“I appreciate the mayor’s decision to enlist a task force to help determine the future of the Sisson Street Waste Transfer Station,” Cohen said in a statement to The Brew.

“This legislation will not receive a hearing until the task force has completed their work and we can properly evaluate all options,” he wrote, adding significantly:

“I believe there may be better alternatives out there and look forward to discussions with my colleagues on the Council, the mayor’s team, task force members and community.”

Citizen Voices

After Scott reversed course, critics of the idea celebrated their success in influencing City Hall.

“This win comes after hundreds of members of our community, along with many other neighborhood groups and nonprofits, reached out to ask for better options,” crowed Alice Volpitta of Blue Water Baltimore.

“Proof that grassroots advocacy works!” Volpitta exclaimed in a social media post to members and supporters.

The offices of Scott, Ramos, Jones and other lawmakers were flooded with phone calls and emails expressing outrage over the relocation plan,  some of which could be found in the online file for Bill 25-0094.

One of them was a Charles Village resident, who said she likes to “walk and bike along the Jones Falls every day.”

“Whenever I do, I dream of the day when we can one day have clean water in this waterway that can be used for recreation. We have this amazing, beautiful stream running the length of our city, but we have to worry about its toxicity for humans and animals.”

Another letter writer asked city officials to “try standing in front of my house” on Preston Street, and “try feeling the dry heat from the bricks and the cement.”

“The nearest true park is the Jones Falls,” she wrote. “There you can feel the cooler air that trees and the water create. You are messing with the one good park we can walk to!”

Another person had this cynical observation:

“City Hall should be trying to make the city nicer instead of ruining what we have that is nice, but I am not surprised by it. It is like City Hall is all about the money.”

Local architect Klaus Philipsen, who writes about urban design and planning issues, explained his opposition this way:

“There is a huge untapped potential for the Jones Falls corridor between Maryland Ave. and Union Ave. with a greenway, attractions (a new Streetcar Museum), the revitalized mills and a better experience of the falls of the river.”

“Sending any kind of waste facility, any associated truck circulation and noise into the corridor would greatly reduce the potential and be extremely shortsighted,” he concluded.

Scores of people used a form letter to express their opposition, urging that certain improvements to the area be completed “regardless of the outcome of the relocation proposal.” These include widening the Jones Falls Trail and closing Falls Road to through traffic below the Potts & Callahan site – as was done during the pandemic.

Some added their own personal thoughts to that message.

Yiannis Sakellaridis demanded to know why the Scott administration is not following through with its Greenway Trails Network Master Plan for bike paths, but is “instead degrading its existing trails.”

“Baltimore has lots of degraded, post-industrial properties,” Sakellaridis wrote. “Why does the relocation have to happen in a floodplain adjacent to a river recovering from decades of pollution?”