THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, February 2, 1996 TAG: 9602020402
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Guy Friddell
LENGTH: Medium: 60 lines
My brief for fallen leaves is let them be, let them lie. They renew the Earth. They quilt wild things against the cold.
Waterman Tom Reed of the Eastern Shore told me once that nature hates a bare spot as it were a wound and rushes to cover the wound with weeds and leaves.
But society, which likes to prettify, decrees otherwise. So, with leaves ankle deep in mid-December, I ferreted 40 black plastic bags out of the pantry and filled them, and had at least another 40 to go.
Only then did it hit me that the law says leaves should be stowed in clear bags. That belated awakening shows what happens when a fool has his mind on everything but what he is doing. This one tends to go into a trance when raking leaves.
In stores, clear plastic trash bags were as rare as the leaves were plentiful. To find enough clear bags took trips to two stores, where clerks had to help me root them out.
The other day I called Louis Jordan, Norfolk's waste management supervisor.
Why clear bags? I asked.
And I learned a lesson in government at its creative best.
On weekly rounds, trucks pick up the bagged leaves and haul them to transfer stations in the eight localities of the Southeastern Public Service Authority.
At each locality's transfer station, workers inspect the transparent bags to make sure they contain nothing but yard waste.
Any leaf bags that contain bottles or cans are rejected and set aside with the garbage bags. For the disposal of the garbage, the locality pays SPSA $48.20 a ton.
The loads of leaves are delivered to a recycling station at Mount Trashmore in Virginia Beach, where they are ground to bits and sold as commercial-grade mulch or compost to landscapers and developers.
For leaf disposal the locality pays only $28.75 a ton. All fees help fund the operating costs of SPSA. Much of the garbage is incinerated at a plant in Portsmouth to supply power for the adjacent Norfolk Naval Shipyard.
Jordan, who has been waste management supervisor for years, prefers to be called Norfolk's head garbage man.
``I'm trying to remove any stigma in anybody's mind about my fellow employees,'' he said.
``They work hard and they work in all kinds of weather, sometimes when nobody else is out there. They and their families have a right to be proud of doing a vital, valuable, cost-saving service for the city, and I'm proud of them.''
Well, so am I . . . and grateful.
And I'll tell you something else. Whether we like the word or not, all of us - moderates, conservatives, liberals, using those clear plastic bags - are environmentalists. by CNB