THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, July 28, 1996 TAG: 9607250192
SECTION: CAROLINA COAST PAGE: 49 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Opinion
SOURCE: BY DIANE HENDERSON
LENGTH: 93 lines
The article that Thomas Sowell admired (Virginian-Pilot op-ed page, July 13) in the New York Times Magazine by one John Tierney, was picked up in the July 7 Raleigh News and Observer. The Tierney article recycles many of the ``facts'' from Jeff Bailey's Jan. 19, 1995, article in the Wall Street Journal, later condensed in the Reader's Digest. As a local public official responsible for solid waste, recycling and water in the Town of Southern Shores, on the North Carolina Outer Banks, I must respond to some of his remarks about recycling.
Most of our town's solid waste - about 77 percent - is ``consumer trash.'' Large portions can be recycled. It was not expected that recycling would provide a net saving to the municipal budget. Garbage collection doesn't, either, but would anyone want us to stop providing that service? Hardly any municipal services save money. However, it's not just an economic equation.
Many of the observations in the referenced articles are simply inapplicable to northeastern North Carolina. This is not New York. We do have a garbage crisis. We did run out of dump space. Dare County's landfill had to be closed in October 1994, because it was unlined and did not meet safety standards. Unlined landfills are dangerous in the coastal plain because our water supplies depend heavily on groundwater aquifers comparatively near the surface. Landfills contaminate groundwater when leachates percolate through the permeable layers of soil to reach the aquifers. Sand is highly permeable. Most of Dare County uses water pumped from deep wells and processed in reverse osmosis plants. The wells depend on groundwater aquifers.
The large new lined and monitored landfill to which our waste is sent charges a tipping fee of $47.75 per ton for waste deposited there. It is over 100 miles away, in Bertie County; there are very few sites in our heavily wetland region where a safe landfill can be established. Building and operating them is expensive, and they do not accept all items. A law effective July 1 of 1994, banned aluminum cans and anti-freeze from landfills in the state. Previously banned were: asbestos; building materials; hazardous, radioactive or medical waste; lead acid batteries; liquid waste; paint, motor oil, or other toxic or flammable liquids; motor vehicle tires; pesticides; rocks, dirt, sand; sharps; yard wastes. Any of these items could be the cause for a refusal of delivery at the landfill and could involve fines levied on the municipality.
Keeping unacceptable, recyclable items out of the regional landfill is a partial reason for our curbside recycling program. The current landfill is expensive; a replacement would very likely be even more costly. (We cannot look for competitive pricing in landfills; our current arrangement is under a 20-year contract executed with the Albemarle Regional Solid Waste Authority before the flow control issue had been resolved in the Supreme Court, so we - and the county and other Dare municipalities - are stuck for another 17 years.
We encourage backyard composting. To deal with non-compostable yard waste, the town provides a brush chipping and delivery service for plant materials (370 tons in FY95; no vines, please). Without curbside recycling, our summer population did not recycle. From 1989 to 1994, recycling quantities dropped off every summer. About half the houses in Southern Shores are rented in the summer to vacationers from all over the eastern U.S. and Canada. Most visitors recycle where they live, and are willing to do it on vacation, if it is not inconvenient. Therefore, in 1994, Southern Shroes started a curbside recycling collection program. We have been pleased with the results; almost 40 percent of residential waste was recycled in 1996.
Newspapers represent about half the town's recycling tonnage, and are worth recycling for several reasons. The University of Arizona's Garbage Project found that newspapers did not biodegrade in landfills; they become mummified. Why not divert this approximately 40 percent of landfill content through recycling into useful paper products?
Recycling creates jobs (an important economic good) for people who collect, sort, and process the materials. It provides profits for investors in the comprehensive waste collection businesses. It provides materials for new products (Polartec textiles, plastic ``lumber,'' for instance), and reduces the need to use fossil fuels for plastics and live trees for paper. (Tierney and Sowell say trees are planted to replace those cut for paper-making. But since they are all the same kinds of trees, they do nothing to enhance or preserve biodiversity.) Preservation of forested areas is an intangible good that may have measurable effects on the quality of water in streams and rivers, which flow into the sounds. It is hard to put a dollar value on water quality. (Conservative economists apparently don't consider water quality.)
Where one stands on whether or not to recycle has some basis in one's fundamental world view. If you think it is OK to continue to use up resources in the belief that natural resources may well be finite, and if you think that there may be a future on earth for humans and other living things, and that we should try to preserve rather than use up supplies of raw materials, then you may think that recycling is worthwhile.
Southern Shores' recycling program does not consume many resources - one Town Council member, and contractors for collection, sorting, and marketing. As long as recycling participation rates are satisfactory, we will feel no need to inspect trash containers to look for recyclables. Until there is an economical, fair, ``pay as you throw'' system to recover the cost of waste services based on what each household discards and recycles, the Town Council believes unanimously that recycling is a reasonable service for the municipality to provide using tax dollars. MEMO: Diane Henderson, a member of the Southern Shores Town Council,
says this article represents only her own opinion. by CNB