FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: December 1, 2025
Armourdale, Kansas — After months of Armourdale community action, led by RiSE for Environmental Justice (RiSE4EJ), Reworld (formerly Covanta) withdrew its permit application to build a chemical waste processing facility in Armourdale, Kansas. Among other concerns, residents flagged significant deficiencies in the permit filing and raised objections to unpermitted construction. The permit withdrawal comes after residents demanded transparency and accurate information about many key threats to public health, including increased truck traffic, wastewater transport and discharge, and flooding–none of which were addressed in the permit application.
On July 10, 2025, Reworld submitted a Special Use Permit (SUP) application to construct a Materials Processing Facility (MPF) in Armourdale, Kansas, and began construction at the site before any such permit was granted. Led by RiSE4EJ, a local community-based, environmental justice organization, and with support from the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA), the Armourdale community spent the past four months organizing community residents–including numerous meetings and trainings, informational sessions, and uplifting community expertise. They have also been working to ensure transparency and to provide information to the boards of commissioners during their evaluation of Reworld’s permit application. This effort turned out community members who provided powerful testimony–some for the first time–at every City Planning Commission permit hearing.
“This win belongs to the people: to every neighbor who showed up, spoke up, translated, shared flyers, gathered signatures, counted trucks, made calls, and refused to be silenced,” said Beto Lugo Martinez, Executive Director of RiSE4EJ. “It’s proof that grassroots power works and that when communities come together, we can protect our health, our air, and our future.”
“When we work together to uplift and center the voices of the most impacted communities, we wield a powerful tool against the corporations trying to build their dirty, toxic infrastructure near our homes,” said Jessica Roff, Plastics & Petrochemicals Program Manager, US/Canada at GAIA. “Industry already overburdens specific communities–mostly Black, Brown, Indigenous, and lower wealth communities–so it is critical that we hold them accountable for truth and transparency, and when they don’t deliver, they don’t get to operate.”
City Planning commissioners recognized the potential threats posed by the MPF and required Reworld to provide studies on the facility’s public health and environmental impacts, as well as to hold numerous meetings to engage and hear from community members. After months of delays and failing to comply with these requirements, Reworld withdrew its SUP application from the Planning and Zoning board.
RiSE4EJ, GAIA, and the Armourdale community will work to ensure that Reworld does not move its toxic proposal to another community down the road.
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About RiSE 4 Environmental Justice (RiSE4EJ): RiSE4EJ organizes in resistance to chemical exposures, environmental toxins, environmental racism, and ecological destruction to improve and protect the health and well-being of fenceline communities. RiSE4EJ centers on community solutions to dismantle the root causes of injustice through self-determination, affirming the rights of people of color to represent and speak for themselves, and reclaiming a future where our rights to clean air, land, and water are safeguarded.
About the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA): GAIA is a worldwide alliance of more than 1,000 grassroots groups, non-governmental organizations, and individuals in over 90 countries. With our work, we aim to catalyze a global shift towards environmental justice by strengthening grassroots social movements that advance solutions to waste and pollution. We envision a just, zero waste world built on respect for ecological limits and community rights, where people are free from the burden of toxic pollution, and resources are sustainably conserved, not burned or dumped.
Press Contacts:
Beto Lugo Martinez: betomtz.lugo@rise4ej.org
Atenas Mena: atenas@rise4ej.org
María Guillén: mariaguillen@no-burn.org
