An open letter to Hennepin County Commissioner Angela Conley

Dear Commissioner Conley,

I am an African American woman who has lived about a mile away from the HERC trash burner since 1999. I breathe its pollution every day. I am writing because I believed you were going to change that.

You made history in 2019 when you were elected as Hennepin County’s first Black commissioner. You spearheaded a resolution declaring racism a “public health crisis.” You ran in 2018 on an environmental justice platform that included phasing out the trash burner. Your campaign website read: “community voices matter.”

For months, the Zero Burn Coalition worked with you and Commissioner Lunde on a resolution to close the trash burner. The county’s largest single polluter and a decades-long source of environmental racism, poisoning frontline communities in North Minneapolis and in your own district.

When a fourth vote was secured in 2023, closure was within reach. Instead of seizing that moment, you shut community members out of the resolution drafting process, a direct violation of environmental justice principles and your own promises. In 2021, you co-authored a resolution to include impacted community members in decisions about the trash burner. You abandoned that commitment the moment it mattered.

The resolution that passed proved it. It called for a “closure plan” between 2028 and 2040. You publicly called it “unacceptable,” demanded “bold action,” and said you wanted closure by 2028, calling the trash burner’s continued operation an “emergency.” I was there when you said this. Then, when we asked to be part of the closure planning itself, we were ignored. The resulting plan does not require the trash burner to close, ever. It states on page 35 that a new resolution is necessary to do that. The gap between your public statements and your actions is impossible to ignore.

In December 2024, we had a virtual meeting with you to present an analysis showing the trash burner was not profitable, it had put the county millions of dollars in debt. I had come to talk to a community-rooted leader. Instead, I found a politician protecting her position with incinerator industry talking points. I left the meeting in tears because your words contradicted everything you said you stood for.

Every time we addressed one of your stated concerns, you moved to a new excuse without ever acknowledging you had held the previous one. When we presented landfill capacity data, a Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy analysis showing landfills have capacity through 2054, you called it misinformation. Kirk Koudelka of the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency had confirmed just moments before that trash going to the burner could be redirected to existing landfills. You chose to ignore that.

On April 10, four community members began a hunger strike. They are refusing food until you and Hennepin County commit to closing the trash burner. People do not stop eating because they have other options. They are doing this because you have left us no other options.

Commissioner Conley, when you call documented facts misinformation to avoid taking action, you are not protecting my community. You are protecting the trash burner.

It has been nearly eight years since you were elected on a platform that included closing the incinerator. Children are sick. People have died. The emergency you named is still burning.

You said the trash burner is an emergency. I live in that emergency every day.

It’s not too late to do the right thing. Commissioner Conley, work with us to negotiate a resolution that will close the trash burner and open the way to a future of equity for all.

Sincerely,

Stephani Maari Booker

Stephani Maari Booker is a Minneapolis-based writer and environmental advocate.