Last month, we thought the use of aborted children to generate heat and power was limited to the UK. Instead, we discovered this week that the ghastly practice took place in Oregon, perhaps unwittingly. A waste-to-energy plant contracted with the British Columbia Health Ministry to incinerate medical waste — including aborted babies.

For now, the practice has stopped (via Katie Pavlich):

An Oregon county commission has ordered an incinerator to stop accepting boxed medical waste to generate electricity after learning the waste it’s been burning may include tissue from aborted fetuses from British Columbia.

Sam Brentano, chairman of the Marion County board of commissioners, said late Wednesday the board is taking immediate action to prohibit human tissue from future deliveries at the plant that has been turning waste into energy since 1987.

“We provide an important service to the people of this state and it would be a travesty if this program is jeopardized due to this finding,” he said in a statement. “We thought our ordinance excluded this type of material at the waste-to-energy facility. We will take immediate action to ensure a process is developed to prohibit human tissue from future deliveries.”

Did the managers and the county commissioners know about this? They claim no, but one of the workers said “they had to know“:

Bud Waterman, a former temp worker at Covanta Marion, Inc., said two to three times a week, 53-foot tractor trailers carrying biohazards dropped off loads at the facility in Brooks.

On more than one occasion, Waterman said the contents of the truck spilled out of their containers.

“It would make you sick, especially if you had to clean it up or have to pull a box off the trailer,” said Waterman. …

“They knew it, they had to. I don’t see how they could not know it,” said Waterman.

The kicker? Waterman told KOIN that the facility had incinerated dead babies for years, in part because the Canadian government won’t dispose of fetal remains in this manner. That’s presumably why the BCHM sent the medical waste to Oregon in the first place.

KOIN says it will continue investigating this story. Good for them. Perhaps other news outlets in the US might want to start looking at their local waste-to-energy facilities, too, to see what trucks are dumping into the boilers and burners.