THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, August 28, 1996 TAG: 9608280438
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY SCOTT HARPER, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: 70 lines
A day after a local TV station showed video of recyclable paper being buried at the city landfill, an official at City Hall said Tuesday the city has reached an agreement to end the embarrassing episode.
``No more material will be going to the landfill,'' said Oral Lambert, the city's chief of staff. ``This starts immediately.''
Lambert said a trash contractor, New England CRInc., will accept and recycle tons of paper goods from drop-off centers at city schools - paper that for at least three days was quietly dumped at the Mount Trashmore II landfill on Centerville Turnpike.
Channel 13 broadcast pictures Monday night of a truckload of used newspaper, cardboard boxes and other paper products being emptied into the ground. Such wastes are supposed to be sorted, baled and sold as fodder for environmentally friendly packaging and recycled paper.
Lambert said he hopes Virginia Beach residents, who historically have been avid recyclers, do not lose faith in the city's recycling program as a result. He called the incident ``a hiatus, a very short-term thing'' that was based on ``a snap decision'' by the city staff.
The troubles that led to the dumping involve city contracts, a desire to be frugal and a roller-coaster market for recycled materials.
Even if defused, as city officials hope, the problem will not likely enhance trust in a city-run recycling program that started July 1 and has been met with complaints of overstuffed drop-off bins and blowing trash.
New England CRInc. and another contractor, Tidewater Fibre Corp., had been handling used paper from Virginia Beach's drop-off centers and schools until the market for used paper dropped like a stone late last year.
Without a profit motive, and with processing costs high, CRInc. asked the city to pay a fee to offset its expenses. Tidewater Fibre, meanwhile, informed the city that it would keep taking materials from drop-off centers but not from schools, which it had no contract for, Lambert explained.
The city initially balked at the fee request. Also about this time, Virginia Beach withdrew from a regional curbside recycling program run by the Southeastern Public Service Authority, or SPSA.
As a replacement, the city launched an expanded drop-off program on July 1. The result: a huge increase in old cans, bottles, plastic containers and paper goods remained with the city instead of going to SPSA.
Swamped by the surge of recyclable material, and frustrated for lack of a fee, CRInc. stopped taking paper deliveries last week, Lambert said.
With no place to store its mounds of paper, the city decided to simply dump them in Mount Trashmore II, hoping that markets would soon turn around and contractors would again accept the materials without a city fee, Lambert said.
But the dumping was aired on TV Monday night, and citizens immediately cried foul. So Tuesday, the city contacted CRInc. and said a fee was forthcoming, Lambert said.
He said that the fee would likely amount to ``thousands of dollars'' but that the arrangement would probably be temporary.
``We'll be looking at this on a week-to-week, month-to-month basis,'' Lambert said. MEMO: HOW IT HAPPENED
The market for used paper fell, robbing trash contractors of their
profit motive for collecting it. One cut back, and the other wanted the
city to pay a fee.
Then the city launched an expanded drop-off program after it dropped
out of the SPSA. That meant a huge increase in paper goods remaining
with the city.
Virginia Beach wouldn't pay a fee for collection, so that contractor
stopped collecting.
The city was left with no place to store its paper, so it decided to
dump it in the Mount Trashmore II landfill.
KEYWORDS: RECYCLABLE MATERIAL LANDFILL by CNB