Sunday Carroll Eagle
History will know us by our trash
Sunday Carroll Eagle March 9, 2008 by Kevin Dayhoff
Folks have asked me where they may find my March 9th, 2008 Sunday Carroll Eagle column... Well... I cannot find it on the Westminster Eagle web site...
Sooo... Pasted below, please find the column as it was written. It is my understanding that the column was altered for publication…
Ever since the first Earth Day on April 22, 1970, many of us has felt that the best management approach to solid waste was source reduction and recycling. It would take 18 long years to get the Maryland Recycling Act passed in 1988. That legislation required a recycling rate of 20 percent.
Twenty years later, getting the recycling rate increased is still illusive. In 1998, on the 10-year anniversary of the law, the Baltimore Sun ran a lengthy analysis in which the Maryland General Assembly member who spearheaded the recycling initiative, Montgomery County Sen. Brian Frosh, admitted “that recycling has been costlier than expected. His 1988 bill predicted significant cost savings…”
Later in the article, the $250 million cost of recycling 2.5 million tons was compared to the $83 million it would’ve cost to landfill it instead. The rest of the article went downhill from there.
Those of us who are opposed to landfilling were less than pleased. Four decades after the first Earth Day, the recycling rate in Carroll County is only around 30 percent.
Meanwhile, on May 29, 1997, Commissioners Donald Dell and Richard Yates voted to transfer the trash out of the county. Commissioner Ben Brown wanted - as many of us wanted - to build a co-composting facility.
This decision came after thirteen years of study which began in 1984 when Carroll, Frederick, and Howard County investigated “building a regional waste-to-energy incinerator,” according to an old press clipping. The commissioners opted instead to build another landfill.
In subsequent research, on a June 17, 1993 visit to the Lancaster County waste-to-energy plant, one of the fascinating components of the operation was mining an existing landfill.
After two years of research, on April 21, 1994, a second “Waste-to-Energy Committee” rejected building an incinerator. The 23 members “instead recommend(ed) aggressive recycling programs… to extend the life” of the landfills.
That was followed on April 24, 1996, when Mike Evans, the Carroll County director of public works first warned the Environmental Affairs Advisory Board (EAAB) that Northern Landfill, which began operations in December 1988 was going to run out of capacity in 15 to 20 years. It takes 10 years to site locate, permit and build a landfill.
The EAAB, for which I was chair at the time, exhausting investigated increasing our recycling rate, co-composting, landfilling, waste-to-energy and charging for trash pickup by weight. The research involved a number of field trips, including a trip to the co-composting facility in Sevierville, TN.
Nevertheless, in spite of our best efforts, our investigation could not justify the economic feasibility of co-composting or convince us that an incinerator would not cause more problems than it solved.
Fast forward to today and the European Union has the strictest environmental regulations in the world. In several EU countries, landfilling has been discontinued in lieu of a waste-to-energy and recycling interactive waste management.
It was noted in a German Federal Ministry for the Environment study released in September 2005: “In the eighties of the previous century, waste incineration plants came to be the symbol of environmental contamination… Today, more than half of all household waste (55%) is recycled… Since June 1, 2005, untreated waste is no longer landfilled. And because of stringent regulations waste incineration plants are no longer significant in terms of emissions of dioxins, dust, and heavy metals…”
Much of the opposition to waste-to-energy these days is based on information that is decades out of date.
Meanwhile many of us are concerned that we cannot increase our recycling rate quickly enough to avoid the costly and environmentally suspect method of hauling our trash to Virginia and throwing it in a hole.
Nevertheless, hopefully Northern Landfill is the last trash dump in the county’s history.
In consideration of the ability to generate and sell electricity and the opportunity to mine all our existing landfills and restore them to a productive use - -waste-to-energy appears to be today’s worthiest trash management option.
One of the earliest references to a landfill in Carroll County is when the Bark Hill landfill began operations in 1892 near Uniontown. The county it over in 1972 and closed it in 1981.
Throughout history there have been around 30 trash disposal sites in Carroll County. How many can you name? What memories do you have of getting rid of trash years ago? How many folks remember one of the first trash hauling companies in Carroll County, G. L. Cubbage?
E-mail me your memories and we’ll throw your name in a hat and draw one for a famous Sunday Carroll Eagle coffee mug. You can use it instead of a throwaway cup and avoid contributing to the trouble with trash.
When Kevin Dayhoff is not recycling, he can be reached at: kdayhoff at carr.org
####
Footnote:
The Sunday Carroll Eagle: October 28, 2007 - On October 28th, 2007 the publication for which I write, The Westminster Eagle and The Eldersburg Eagle, (which is published by Patuxent Newspapers and owned by Baltimore Sun); took over the Carroll County section of the Baltimore Sun.
“The Sunday Carroll Eagle ” is inserted into the newspaper for distribution in Carroll County. For more information, please contact:
Mr. Jim Joyner, Editor, The Westminster Eagle
121 East Main Street
Westminster, MD 21157
(410) 386-0334 ext. 5004
Jjoyner AT Patuxent DOT com
For more posts on “Soundtrack” click on: Sunday Carroll Eagle
http://kevindayhoff.blogspot.com/search/label/Sunday%20Carroll%20Eagle
20071028 The Sunday Carroll Eagle introduction
http://kevindayhoff.blogspot.com/2007/10/20071028-sunday-carroll-eagle.html
Also see: Monday, October 22, 2007: 20071021 Baltimore Sun: “To our readers”
http://kevindayhoff.blogspot.com/2007/10/20071021-baltimore-sun-to-our-readers.html
