Two weeks ago I pussy-footed my way up to the subject of solid waste funding options, now and in the future:
Today’s landfills are more than just repositories for absolutely worthless stuff. They are often the hiding places for materials for which no viable markets exist. In a great number of cases they are cash cows, not only for other waste management programs that cannot fund themselves, but even as reservoirs into which public officials can dip to shore up general fund shortfalls.
If these are roles we want landfills to play in the future, then let’s inform the public. Ditto their use as low-efficiency anaerobic digesters, marketplaces for composted greenwaste, receptacles for disaster-spawned materials or unwanted recyclables, or dumping grounds for diseased poultry or livestock.
For many jurisdictions, the struggling economy has had an impact on their waste funding mechanisms, and while the downturn in consumerism may be a temporary aberration, the long-term situation, particularly in terms of landfill gate receipts, is not likely to improve if, as it seems inevitable, we find ways to increase our overall diversion rates.
One problem local jurisdictions face in common is a mounting number of statutory and regulatory mandates from federal and state authorities—mostly unfunded—that increase costs, putting them in the uncomfortable position of having to seek rate increases from a public itself in need of relief.
Could it be that the bureaucrats in these upper reaches of government don’t know what’s going on out here in the boondocks? Worse still, could it be they know but just don’t care? I think it’s little of both, with a third force—overstaffitis—adding to the problem.
It was gratifying to hear Rosalie Mule, member of the California Integrated Waste Management Board (CIWMB), tell the audience last week at Southern California’s 38th Annual Western Regional Symposium that she understood the predicament but that it was up to us to make ourselves heard…and in a era in which political agendas are often held hostage by the most irrational of activists, this is what we must do.
We need to get out of our stealth mode and yell bloody murder to our contemporaries, our local elected officials, and the public-at-large, asking them take the message to those who levy demands with scant concern for the consequences. That like the character Howard Beale in the 1976 movie, Network, they need to know that [we’re]…”mad as hell and we’re not going to take it any more!”
And while we’re doing this, maybe CIWMB will question what it’s doing to decrease its burden on the community it serves.