While taking the action, Marion County commissioners Sam Brentano and Janet Carlson said they were horrified to learn that the Marion County Resource Recovery Facility in rural Brooks might be burning medical waste that includes fetal tissue to generate electricity. The plant burns 500 tonnes of solid waste every day, “providing 11 megawatts per hour of electricity to Portland General Electric Company,” according to Covanta documents. Some of the fetal material came from the Canadian province of British Columbia, where regional health authorities have a contract with waste management firm Stericycle and send biomedical waste, such as fetal tissue, cancerous tissue and amputated limbs to the Oregon facility, said Kristy Anderson, a spokeswoman with the British Columbia Health Ministry. It may also include fetal tissue from miscarriages and abortions, according to the ministry.
– Two horrified anti-abortion county commissioners in Oregon have ordered a waste-to-energy plant to stop burning any medical waste until it can be sure that no fetal tissue is being incinerated. The Marion County plant burns large amounts of biomedical waste from British Columbia, and the commissioners say they were disgusted to learn from a report in a Catholic newspaper that some of the 14,000 fetuses aborted in the Canadian province every year are "incinerated to provide electricity to the people of Marion County," the National Post reports. The commissioners say there has to be "a process to figure out how we can accept legitimate medical waste," including amputated limbs and cancerous tissue, but accepting fetal tissue is out of the question, reports the Oregonian. "It's inappropriate to put them in the trash," one commissioner says. A spokeswoman for the incinerator firm says that while the medical waste may have contained fetal tissue including umbilical cords or placentas, it did not contain whole fetuses. She says the company is cooperating with the order to stop accepting medical waste while new procedures are put in place, the AP reports. Last month, the UK banned the incineration of fetal remains after learning that thousands of fetuses had been burned for power.