Sunday, March 06, 2005

The Recycling Forum — 050305

Critical observations on the Recycling Forum of 5 March 2005

I attended the meeting, graciously organized and hosted by the 2010 Commission and Paul Brown. Kudos to them for setting up this town hall activity. It’s a shame places like Denver and the surrounding townships don’t do as much. Another reason that this is a great place to live.

Down to business. I won’t reiterate everything that you can read by others here or in the Chieftain. However, there are some things that came out from the presentations and comments from the panel that stuck in my mind and I’d like to share them with all of you.

First off there is the image of the ugly monsters we’ve purportedly established over the last hundred years here in Pueblo. I’m talking about the landfills that are already in existence. According to one of the presenters on the panel there is a threat that they will begin

< ¡horror! > ‘leaching’. Indeed. One is already < ¡shudder! >

‘leaching’. It is being monitored by the state, so we should get some kind of warning before we have to start getting all our water and truck farm produce from the Alamosa Valley not to forget shooting, burning and burying in quicklime the cat for eating the grass.

It came out a bit later, thanks to some of the citizens, that the ‘leaching’ problem stems mostly, if not completely, from landfills generated before the government discovered the problem and implemented criteria for landfill construction and management to forestall such problems. This means that leaching is not understood to be a problem with landfills that have been established, in accordance with standards, since such rules went into effect.

Yes, there are landfills that do have serious problems. These are old pre-regulated landfills. However, there are none around Pueblo, to the best of everyone’s knowledge, as reported yesterday. There is one old landfill that is ‘leaching’, but no tests have indicated that anything hazardous is in the effluant. It might be one closed before people started throwing old motor oil and batteries into the mix.

This brought to mind a question about what caused the concern over leaching. What was the source of the contaminants in these landfills? Nobody mentioned that during the meeting. So I’m left asking, was it the materials we were targeting for mandatory recycling? Glass? Steel, aluminum or tin cans? Newsprint? Are these things, when mixed with rainwater and dirt the source of the carcinogens that are implied to be in the ‘leaching’? I kind of doubt it. If they were, I doubt if we’d be using them for containing our food products and such. And newsprint is 100% biodegradable. When it ‘leaches’, it’s used by other plants to help them grow in a constructive way.

So, if it’s not glass, metal or paper that is the source of the leaching concern, what is? What can be done about it, that hasn’t been done already? We no longer allow dumping of petroleum products, lead-acid batteries or other materials hazardous to the environment. we add more materials to that list as they become evident.

So why all this concern about leaching? Is someone practicing a bit of fear-mongering? If so, why? Ignorance? Something worse?

[Note: I think I’ll watch Robert Preston in The Music Man, tonight.

We surely got trouble!
Right here in River City.
With a capital “T” and I do mean “T”;
And that stands for TRASH!]

The really telling item came out towards the end of the forum. After people stopped coming to the podium to address their questions and comments. After the panelists had made their final statements, someone in the audience to the left of me asked a question that elicited a telling response from one of the panel. The question was something to the effect of “When will we realize a benefit from this recycling?”

The panelist who answered explained it something like this.

A company will be contracted to operate the recycling facility that is built. After that company realizes a certain level of revenue from the operation of the recycling facility and operations, all other money will come back to the city.

Get that? The city coffers will benefit from this, directly. The citizens of the city will benefit, if at all, indirectly.

So, we have people shelling out $3-4 per month to whomever to run this recycling operation. Any profit realized from it, over and above the profit limit stated in the contract with the operator of the recycling facility will go to the city.

Folks. This, as it stands now, is nothing more, nothing less, than another tax, wrapped up in the mantle of recycling.

If the City Fathers would like to dissuade the citizens of this city that it is NOT a tax, then they will write the ordinance and the contract to read that all money received by the city will go to reduce the payments to participate in recycling. After the citizens are not paying for recycling, then the money goes into the city coffers.