After a yearlong review, environmental officials announced yesterday that they are continuing a 15-year-old moratorium on expanding or building new incinerators.

...Environmental officials had decried the efforts to end the moratorium, arguing that new incinerators, however improved technologically, would contribute more pollution. Allowing new plants, they said, would encourage more incineration of waste and stifle incentives to recycle.

... “Recycling saves three to five times the energy that can be captured by incineration and without the harmful impacts on public health and the environment,’’ said Lee Ketelsen, codirector of Clean Water Action New England. “Every 10,000 tons of garbage that goes to disposal creates only one job, but the same amount of discarded products can employ dozens of people in recycling and hundreds more in reuse and repair.’’