Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs): HERC, Chair Fernando's Position, Recent Media Stories, and the Path Forward
What is the HERC?
The Hennepin Energy Recovery Center (HERC) is a waste-to-energy facility located near Twins stadium in the North Loop neighborhood of Minneapolis that has operated since 1989. It diverts some recyclable material from the waste stream and incinerates the rest, producing enough electricity to power approximately 25,000 Minneapolis homes and provide heating and cooling to about half of the downtown office buildings. Each year the HERC burns over 365,000 tons of solid waste, or about 1,000 tons per day.
Does Chair Fernando support ending trash-burning at the HERC?
Yes. Since her first term in office, Commissioner Fernando and Commissioner Conley have introduced Board Actions toward ending burning at the HERC. At first, efforts were unsuccessful and did not receive enough votes to pass. In 2023, the State Legislature passed provisions related to HERC’s closure; therefore, Chair Fernando authored a Board Action that directed staff to develop a plan to advise the Board on the closure of the HERC facility between 2028 and 2040. Commissioner Fernando believes waste incineration at the HERC can conclude within this decade, but only with a reasonable operational plan in place for the current waste stream that enters the facility currently. This requires actions from the State of Minnesota, and the municipalities that use the HERC as a service.
What has Chair Fernando actually done to advance closure?
Chair Fernando has been working toward responsible closure and a just transition since taking office in 2019. In 2023, she helped lead the unanimous passage of a County Board resolution (mentioned in the previous question) — the first successful governance action toward concluding waste incineration in the facility’s history. This resolution resulted in the County’s plan to Reinvent the Solid Waste System, presented in January 2024. This detailed and ambitious plan to reinvent Hennepin County's solid waste system outlined the various work needed in order to conclude burning in the fastest responsible timeline, specifically highlighting partnership and measurable progress needed with municipal partners and the State of Minnesota.
Does Chair Fernando have a comment on the ongoing hunger strike?
Chair Fernando does not comment on specific advocacy actions because that is the individual right of each person. She respects the deep commitment that residents have expressed toward environmental justice and shares the goal of concluding waste incineration at the HERC on the fastest responsible timeline.
Why won't the County just set a closure date right now?
Closing the HERC when there is not an operational plan established for the waste would likely result in service disruptions or dramatic cost increases for residents and businesses. Further, it would result in hundreds of thousands of tons of waste being trucked to suburban and regional landfills — raising costs for residents, increasing truck traffic through neighborhoods, worsening methane emissions, and burdening other environmental justice communities elsewhere in the region.
We must be honest about what a premature, unplanned closure means in practice. Closing the HERC without an operational alternative for the trash does not make waste disappear — it sends it straight to landfills, and Chair Fernando opposes any plan that results in a sustained increase in landfilling, a position shared by the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA). Landfills produce methane, a potent greenhouse gas, and pose long-term threats to groundwater and the communities — often lower-income communities of color — located near them. Commissioner Fernando does not support trading one environmental justice harm for another.
What engagement has Chair Fernando done with the community towards the closure of the HERC?
Chair Fernando has a long history of engagement on the HERC topic with community advocates, cities, and elected leaders. Below is a summary of years of outreach and communication that shows her persistent and consistent engagement on this issue.
Between 2019 and the Fall of 2023, Commissioner Fernando met with advocates about the HERC and had meaningful conversations and strategy sessions multiple times a year.
During her first year as Chair in 2023, Commissioner Fernando was approached by advocates to identify 2040 as the closure year. She rejected this and pushed instead for 2030 as the goal. Thanks to the joint advocacy by community advocates and Commissioner Fernando, the County Board unanimously passed its closure resolution in October 2023. That same month, Commissioner Fernando proactively communicated the County's new direction to cities across Hennepin County, ensuring municipal partners understood what the resolution meant and what it would require of them. At this time, Hennepin County solicited formal feedback from cities that use the HERC to better understand what they felt was a reasonable and achievable timeline.
In 2024, her office engaged directly and consistently with the environmental justice community. She met with Minneapolis City Council Members in January to discuss the path forward. She then met with the Minnesota Environmental Justice Table four separate times throughout the year — in February, late April, June, and October. County staff also presented a detailed reinvention plan for the solid waste system in January 2024, laying out the infrastructure investment and phased approach needed to close the HERC responsibly. Commissioner Fernando also presented an update on the County’s plan and needed action by the City of Minneapolis to a committee of the Minneapolis City Council in 2024 and answered questions from Councilmembers.
In 2025, Commissioner Fernando continued engaging across multiple fronts: meeting with lawmakers, municipal leaders, community organizations, and directly with residents of District 2. She also published two lengthy statements that year including her full correspondence with Mayor Frey and City of Minneapolis leadership, at residents' request, keeping with her commitment to transparency.
Commissioner Fernando has been equally clear with advocates about what she will not do: she will not support a closure that redirects waste to landfills, which the MPCA has acknowledged would create new environmental harms. She has also been very clear in her communications that she believes the HERC site should be converted to a Pre-Sort and Recycling facility.
What happened with the plan proposed by Chair Fernando to phase out HERC usage over a two-year period?
Chair Fernando did not formally propose a phase out plan. In July 2025, Chair Fernando published a substantive public statement on the District 2 website, which outlined a potential for a phased quarterly reduction in waste burned at the HERC, with the first phase beginning February 2026 by concluding the City of Minneapolis organized hauling contract. The statement was in response to the City of Minneapolis’ resolution from November 2024, which identified waste incineration to conclude by December 31, 2027 and full decommissioning of the facility by December 31, 2033.
The statement led to City of Minneapolis leadership formally requesting that Hennepin renew their hauler contract without a phase-out plan. City of Minneapolis leadership was clear that they do not yet have a plan that would allow them to no longer use HERC as a service in the coming years. Commissioner Fernando has also pursued direct negotiations with Mayor Frey and City of Minneapolis leadership on this topic for years, and published those communications and their outcomes publicly at the request of constituents. So far in 2026, the County Board reaffirmed this plan and received updates on progress to date and invited the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) to present to the County Board on the solid waste system in Minnesota and the HERC’s role in it.
Does the HERC actually pollute the surrounding community?
The HERC is a regulated facility operating under MPCA permits, and county and City of Minneapolis reports show it has operated on average 80 percent below permitted emission levels over the past decade. That said, Commissioner Fernando knows that any level of harm is unacceptable and the status quo is harmful. Her position is that the facility's location surrounded by densely populated neighborhoods is itself a problem that demands resolution, especially since nearby neighborhoods are characterized by large BIPOC and working class populations. We must move towards a responsible closure and a just transition for the HERC.
What is Chair Fernando's vision for what happens to the HERC site?
Chair Fernando has advocated for the HERC facility to be converted into a Pre-Sort and Recycling center, keeping waste processing infrastructure within Minneapolis, maintaining jobs and services, and diverting more material from the waste stream. She has also advocated for up to two additional Pre-Sort and Recycling facilities in suburban Hennepin County to handle the regional waste load. The City of Minneapolis is the most populous in the state and generates the most waste; therefore, it is important for environmental justice to have a waste processing facility within its geography.
What role does the City of Minneapolis play?
To start, the HERC is a solid waste service that Hennepin provides for municipalities, residents, and businesses who bring waste to the HERC. Minneapolis generates more waste than any other city in Minnesota, and approximately 75% of what gets processed at the HERC comes from Minneapolis — 22% from organized residential collection and 53% from businesses. To visualize this: every month, the trash produced by Minneapolis residents and businesses would fill Nicollet Ave – curb to curb, 6 ft deep – from downtown to 42nd St S (IDS Center to MLK park).
The City passed a resolution in November 2024 calling for incineration to end by December 2027 and full facility closure by 2033 — but that resolution includes no plan for where the waste goes, no alternative infrastructure, and no support for converting the HERC into a pre-sort recycling facility. Commissioner Fernando has been direct: there is presently nowhere in Minneapolis that is zoned to process solid waste at this level of scale. This means, by default, that the City's position as written, is a plan to truck trash to landfills and incinerators outside Hennepin County.
While Chair Fernando personally disagrees with the suggestion to send trash to landfills as a temporary solution, Hennepin County’s jurisdiction over the waste stream largely begins and ends with the HERC. Solid waste governance authority is a function of each municipality (and not the County). Since the City of Minneapolis’ contracted haulers contribute the largest amount of waste to the HERC, the City could divert its waste from the HERC and to a landfill through their governance processes at any time. This is true for all users of the HERC services.
Instead, the City of Minneapolis has persisted in negotiating contracts with the HERC for continued use of the facility for solid waste processing. And last year the recycling rate for the City of Minneapolis actually declined. So while the City of Minneapolis holds a policy position that the HERC should close, City administration has not taken any concrete operational steps to advance that goal outside of what has been required by State law or County action.
What does the State of Minnesota have to do with it?
Hennepin County is committed to remaining in compliance with MN statute and MPCA guidelines. The MPCA's Waste Hierarchy designates waste-to-energy incineration as more environmentally favorable than landfilling — meaning cities and haulers are legally required to prioritize facilities like the HERC before sending waste to a landfill. Any closure plan must work within and alongside that framework. MPCA recently publicly shared with the County Board that the HERC is a vital service needed for the broader solid waste system in Minnesota under current conditions The State Legislature has also taken governance actions such as reclassifying waste-to-energy as non-renewable beginning in 2040 and conditioning bonding funds on submission of a closure plan that were reflected in the County's 2023 resolution.
What does "zero waste" actually mean in this context, and is it achievable?
Hennepin County defines zero waste as diverting 90% of waste away from incineration or landfilling through recycling and composting. Currently, Hennepin County diverts just under 50% of its waste. Commissioner Fernando supports aggressive investment in closing that gap — through food waste prevention, packaging reduction, expanded composting, and recycling infrastructure — as the precondition for responsible HERC closure. She views the HERC's closure and a zero-waste future as connected, not competing, goals.
Chair Fernando is proud of the efforts Hennepin County has made regarding zero waste, including significant investments in funds and staff complement, with a special shout out to Commissioner Conley for her championing of zero waste efforts.
Would the HERC’s closure impact the electrical grid or energy prices?
Currently the HERC produces over 7% of the City of Minneapolis’ power demands annually. While an immediate closure would not create blackouts, it would require more production from investor-owned methane gas-fired power plants to compensate for the loss of output. Methane gas power plants produce higher rates of CO2 and other atmospheric particulates than the HERC, and the additional demand for methane gas for burning power plants would likely increase costs for consumers for home and business appliances that use natural gas.