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Frederick County commissioners are set to decide on Tuesday how they want to dispose of trash: burn it in an incinerator, bury it in a landfill, or use a new technology from an Israeli company.

"Tuesday is going to be a decision point on where we are going to go next," Commissioners' President Jan H. Gardner (D) said Tuesday.

Commissioners are to meet at 8:30 a.m. April 28 at Winchester Hall, 12 E. Church St., Frederick.

The Reich's Ford Road landfill is full, and the county has been shipping trash to landfills in Virginia — a disposal method that officials do not want to continue.

So commissioners have been debating whether or not to build an incinerator, or what some people call a "waste-to-energy" facility because it burns trash to generate electricity.

Opponents have flooded commissioners with e-mails against the incinerator for months, and Commissioner John "Lennie" Thompson Jr. (R) has frequently said that he predicts their political careers will be over if they agree to build an incinerator.

He has reminded the board of the public outcry in 1990, when the county bought the Schrodel farm on Reich's Ford Road to build a landfill. Three of the commissioners who voted in favor of the landfill lost their bids for re-election.

In an effort to explore other ideas in lieu of incineration, Gardner and Commissioner Charles A. Jenkins (R) briefed the board on their meeting with the Israeli company, Arrow Ecology, on March 16 in Philadelphia.

The two met with company representatives to discuss its ArrowBio technology that sorts and disposes of trash using liquid, shredding, gravity, screening and other methods.

Michael G. Marschner, director of the county's Utilities and Solid Waste Management, briefed the board on what it would take to build a new, larger landfill.

No decisions were made, since Gardner felt the board needed a few days to mull over the latest information.

The April 28 meeting will be held during "administrative business." This means no comments from residents will be taken.

"We've taken enough comment at this point," Gardner said.

E-mail Sherry Greenfield at sgreenfield@gazette.net.