Hennepin County Residents Announce Hunger Strike to Urge Closure of HERC Trash Incinerator
Amid County Commissioners’ Failure to Shutter HERC, Community Set for Hunger Strike for Clean Air, Board Transparency and Climate Justice
Media Advisory For: Thursday, January 15, 2026
Media Contact: Erick Boustead, zeroburncoalition@gmail.com; Josh Levitt, mnejt@berlinrosen.com
HENNEPIN COUNTY – Hennepin County residents and members of the Zero Burn Coalition have announced that they are prepared to initiate a hunger strike unless the Hennepin County Board meets their demands in the next 30 days to close the Hennepin Energy Recycling Center (HERC) and address concerns related to community relations. This development comes after years of community exposure to pollution, mounting health concerns, and repeated failures by County Commissioners to take meaningful action to shut down HERC.
As part of the hunger strike, community members are demanding that the Hennepin County Board:
Call for an immediate vote to initiate the closure process, as the County’s own plan lays out.
Implement a community-led transition process, including an official community task force, that will work with the Board to close HERC.
Ensure accountability and transparency regarding the cover-ups at HERC related to workplace safety and operational issues, and by acknowledging HERC’s health effects, environmental racism and classism.
“Hunger strikes have been successful throughout history at winning wage increases, drawing attention to the immorality of a particular actor, and in colonial struggles," said Nazir Khan, executive director at MN EJ Table. “We’ve reached this point where commissioners who campaigned to shut down HERC, who protested against its harms in order to get elected, are now denying those harms. They are doing this as a growing chorus of scientists, doctors, nurses, and public health experts confirm what people who live near the HERC have said for 37 years: It is deadly and dangerous.”
District 6 resident Janet Kitui stated, “I will be on a hunger strike for 5 days to clearly show my commissioner that we need a date to close the HERC. There is no other better way to communicate that message than putting my body on the line.”
Hennepin County residents announced the hunger strike at yesterday’s town hall, where they raised urgent concerns about HERC’s impact on community health and safety and discussed several developments related to HERC, including the City of Minneapolis’s recent budget resolution to establish a Zero Waste Working Group.
County Commissioners Fail to Take Concrete Steps Towards Closure
In November, District 2 constituents and members of the Zero Burn Coalition met with Chair Fernando to discuss HERC and concerns around the County’s continued delays to set a closure date. At the meeting, Fernando committed to releasing an assessment of HERC that would address the source of delays in HERC’s closure and provide updates on her progress to shutter the facility by December 31st, 2027.
After reviewing Fernando’s response, community members at the town hall called out her failure to outline clear next steps to close HERC while downplaying the severe health harms putting her constituents at risk. Fernando also declined to provide specifics or engage with community or outside experts seeking to better understand her proposal to convert HERC into a “recycling and recovery facility,” the county’s term for what appears to be a dirty Materials Recovery Facility (“dirty MRF”). The Zero Burn Coalition requested that Fernando work with the coalition to generate better options for conversion.
“We are not surprised by Commissioner Fernando’s response or lack thereof following our meeting on 11/12/25. Unfortunately, it is more of the same. Chair Fernando is demonstrating that she does not possess the political will to seriously consider the evidence and community testimonies we have provided over many years showing that waste incineration causes harm to public health and exponentially more so than landfilling and yet, poisoning us via the HERC is a choice she continually makes time and again,” stated District 2 resident Natasha Villanueva.
"Our community’s lives are on the line. Many states are moving away from incineration because it causes more waste problems than it solves, but Hennepin County is stuck in the past. We need Commissioner Fernando to lead and set a closure date by standing up to colleagues, the convenience of the status quo, and suburban Hennepin County whose desire to truck their trash to the HERC to burn in our backyard is lauded as responsible whereas our pleas to let us breathe are villainized."
District 6 resident Judy Gregg said, “When I learned that the garbage I took to the curb gets taken to the HERC trash burner where the air that spews out its toxic flames is making folks in North Minneapolis and beyond sick, it made me sick to know this…Without the commissioners implementing and taking a step towards closure, the HERC trash burner will be the biggest obstacle to moving towards a zero waste future.”
While Chair Fernando and Hennepin County continue to stall in closing HERC and ensuring a Zero Waste solution, at Thursday’s town hall, the Zero Burn Coalition applauded the City of Minneapolis for passing a budget resolution this month that establishes a community-led Zero Waste Project Manager and Working Group, ensuring local residents are at the forefront of the City’s Zero Waste efforts.
HERC’s Health, Safety, and Financial Impacts on Hennepin County
Despite intense community opposition, HERC was built in an overburdened area with a history of segregation and the highest asthma hospitalization rate in Minnesota. Since its construction in 1989, HERC has burned 1,000 tons of trash nearly every day, emitting dangerous air pollutants into a dense, urban community, overwhelmingly affecting communities of color. In fact, the population within a 3-mile
radius of HERC has a higher concentration of low-income households and people of color than nearly 90% of the state. Today, HERC remains the largest polluter in Hennepin County.
Kathleen Schuler, MPH, State Policy Director, Health Professionals for a Healthy Climate stated, “Residents who live in proximity to the HERC are exposed to nitrous oxides, lead, mercury, particulate matter, and dioxins, plus cumulative pollution impacts from traffic and industrial facilities, which leads to poorer health and shorter lifespan. An analysis on cumulative burden, based on an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) tool, estimated that in just one year alone, just HERC’s particulate emissions –which are just one of many pollutants that HERC emits–resulted in 1 to 2 premature deaths and $16 million per year in healthcare costs in nearby zip codes. The HERC is adding to the pollution and health burden in communities that are already overburdened by air pollution. We have a responsibility to alleviate these harms by closing the HERC.”
In addition to the public health issues caused by HERC, the facility is simultaneously costing taxpayers millions of dollars each year and continues plunging the public further into serious debt.
Leslie Myint, PhD, Associate Professor of Statistics and Data Science, Macalester College stated, “While the County claims that HERC is profitable, according to expert financial analysis, Hennepin County has not factored in bonds that pay for repairs to HERC into its profitability calculations, including bond issuances, bond interest payments, and depreciation. Publicly available financial data from 2018-2021 show that when bonds were included, HERC operated with a loss of about $3.4 million annually during that period.”
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