The nation's largest medical waste incinerator, tucked into the Hawkins Point neighborhood at the southern tip of Baltimore, has agreed to stop burning hazardous waste altogether. Curtis Bay Energy's settlement with Maryland environmental regulators will end a waste-burning practice that has drawn complaints from South Baltimore residents for years, and state attorneys plan to file the consent decree before a Baltimore judge on Thursday.
The deal, first reported by The Baltimore Banner, stems from a 2024 lawsuit alleging continued air pollution violations at the facility, which handles tens of thousands of pounds of biohazardous material each year from hospital systems across the United States and Canada. Under the settlement, Curtis Bay Energy will pay a $600,000 penalty to the Maryland Department of the Environment, with $60,000 of that earmarked for clean water regulation and the remainder funding the agency's air regulation enforcement. Maryland Department of the Environment Secretary Serena McIlwain said the settlement is a major win for a community overburdened by pollution, according to the Banner's reporting.
A Long History of Violations
This is not Curtis Bay Energy's first brush with the law. In 2023, the company and its former director of operations pleaded guilty to 40 counts of violating Maryland environmental laws, and the company knowingly cut corners during incineration, per the Banner. Maryland officials assessed a $1.75 million fine that year, and under the criminal sentencing, the company was placed on two years of probation, ordered to pay $1 million to the Maryland Clean Water Fund, and required to direct $750,000 to a Supplemental Environmental Project managed by the Chesapeake Bay Trust specifically for South Baltimore environmental and public health projects, according to the Maryland Office of the Attorney General.
The 2023 case grew out of a state investigation that ran from late 2019 into early 2020, when Curtis Bay Energy was owned by Summer Street Capital Partners of New York. During that probe, investigators following a Curtis Bay Energy transport truck to a Virginia landfill reported that fluid leaked from the trailer so heavily it coated the windshields of trailing law enforcement vehicles hauling inadequately burned medical waste across state lines, according to footage from WMAR 2 News. State investigators also documented that plant employees twice attempted to conceal an unpermitted discharge pump and hose beneath a leaking steam condenser during unannounced inspections in late 2019 and early 2020, according to Wikipedia's account of the case, which notes the illegal outlet was used to dump liquid waste onto adjacent property. A separate case against the plant manager failed when prosecutors could not make their case against him, per the Banner.
Smoke Kept Coming After Ownership Changed
California-based Aurora Capital Partners later purchased Curtis Bay Energy's incinerator business, but South Baltimore advocates reported continued emissions violations after the ownership change, the Banner reports. Baltimore scientists and advocates found the incinerator releases black smoke for more than 50 minutes a day, which violates its permits. Frustrated by continued smoke emissions following the 2023 conviction, community organizations including the South Baltimore Community Land Trust installed 24-hour trail cameras to build an independent video record of ongoing daily pollution, according to Baltimore Brew, with residents feeding continuous visual evidence of stack and roof releases directly to state regulators.
The March 2024 lawsuit that led to this week's consent order alleged ongoing, unpermitted releases of hydrogen chloride, carbon monoxide, and fine particulate matter, along with heavy black smoke emitted through unpermitted roof channels that bypassed pollution control systems, according to a complaint cited by PEER. State inspectors documented repeated exceedances of permitted emissions limits during that period.
Health Costs and a Regional Divide
The Banner reports the medical waste incinerator causes roughly $37 million a year in health consequences for the surrounding area. That figure sits within a broader regional tally: a July 2025 study led by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the University of Maryland School of Medicine calculated that the Curtis Bay Medical Waste Incinerator and the nearby WIN Waste trash incinerator together generate a combined $90.7 million in annual health-related economic damages across Maryland and Washington, D.C., per medRxiv — a figure Hoodline previously reported on amid a trash-burning fight in Baltimore County.
Hospital systems have responded differently to the mounting scrutiny. Johns Hopkins Hospital began diverting material away from Curtis Bay Energy two years ago, the Banner notes, and Johns Hopkins Health System had severed all business ties with the company by May 2024 following a Baltimore City Council hearing. But Curtis Bay Energy continues to receive hazardous waste from hospitals in Maryland and elsewhere, and MedStar Health has publicly defended maintaining its incinerator contract, citing a lack of viable alternatives for destroying certain hazardous medical waste categories, according to Inside Climate News. MedStar operates 10 regional hospitals and hundreds of care facilities across Maryland and Washington, D.C.
What Happens Next at the Site
Maggie Clemons said the decision reflects a market transition away from incinerating medical waste, and that Curtis Bay Energy — among the oldest waste treatment facilities in the United States, commissioned around 1994 — is at the end of its useful operating life, per the Banner's reporting. The company is coordinating with local authorities on what it describes as a safe, orderly wind-down. That shift mirrors a national pattern: Environmental Protection Agency regulations updated in 1997 and 2013 under the Clean Air Act imposed strict emission standards on hospital and infectious waste incinerators, driving a nationwide decline in medical waste incineration in favor of non-burn treatments like autoclaving, according to the U.S. EPA.
Under the new settlement, the Maryland Department of the Environment will issue a new permit removing Curtis Bay Energy's authorization for incineration entirely, while allowing the facility to continue operating as a waste transfer station. The agency will limit the site's waste holding capacity to 20,000 tons, about one-third of its current capacity, the Banner reports. Jay Apperson said the state expects it will take six to eight months to phase out incineration at the site, a window that includes time for hospitals to find alternative ways to dispose of hazardous waste.
South Baltimore City Council member Phylicia Porter, who represents the district that includes Curtis Bay and the incinerator, said she was stunned by the news, according to the Banner. The neighborhood's ZIP code, 21226, contains roughly 70 industrial air pollution sources, exposing residents to cumulative environmental hazards from the medical waste incinerator, the BRESCO trash incinerator, CSX coal export terminals, and the Quarantine Road Landfill, as Inside Climate News has detailed, context that has long fueled community advocates' criticism of local solid waste plans for concentrating regional pollution in South Baltimore.
