For example: there is a howl arising from the deserts of Arizona, Nevada, Utah, Oregon and Southern California in opposition to plans being unveiled by the corporate haulers for mega-landfill pyramids of garbage as tall as skyscrapers and covering as much as nine square miles.
It is intended that rail cars will long-haul garbage from the urban areas of the west to these rising pyramids of garbage on a 24 hour a day, 365 days schedule that stretches well into the next century.
It is estimated that when constructed, these trash pyramids will be the first man-made bumps on the earth observable to an astronaut approaching God's little green footstool. Trekkies, Native Americans, gnarled desert rats, turtle lovers, Joshua tree freaks and other environmentally sensitive types are not very happy about any of this.
Indeed, there are many economic, social, scientific and environmental questions to be asked about the proposed heavy investments in desert dumping, but as the environmental community splutters a quick, "Hey, wait a minute", the haulers are hauling their choo-choo cars full of garbage to their respective national Desert Sacrifice Zones as fast as they can. There are, to be sure, some serious environmental and resource issues at stake with these mega-dump scenarios.
All this has been getting the green light from Sacramento, however, in spite of the obvious contradictions between promoting recycling (State Law AB 939) and investments in mega-dumps. Is it state policy to "Reduce, Re-use and Recycle?" Or "Use Up, Throw Away and Buy More?" Businesses, most particularly the Big Three waste hauling conglomerates, have much investment at stake in an essentially political decision.
With the Franchise issue before the Supervisors, it was Mendocino County's turn to declare policy on this and a range of other garbage and recycling issues; issues of profound importance to the public (of course) and to both sectors of the commercial hauling industry; local independent haulers and multinational hauling firms.
In the convoluted ways of county government, an otherwise relatively minor contract decision on the "consent calendar," passed by four to nil, (de Vall absent but opposed), tipped the scales decidedly in favor of the corporate agenda. This set the wheels in motion in favor of county residents having their garbage packed off and sent hundreds of miles, perhaps even thousands of miles, by road and rail to a huge monolith of trash in the desert.
As opposed to ... what? The corporate solution to our local garbage problems is, if nothing else, straightforward to the point of being blunt: Haul it to the desert. Dump it. Send out the bills. The community, environmental, resource conservation-based alternatives to the corporate pyramid vision is entirely more complex and involves:
- a public/private/non-profit mix; no corporate take-overs, no monopolies, with competitive-bidding for short term contracts;
- the avoidance of long-term commitments to inherently expensive, energy-wasting and fragile (if we count earthquakes) technologies and infrastructure such as long-haulimplies and upon which long-haul is dependent;
- the avoidance of "put or pay" contracts which force the communities to produce X number of tons of garbage a year or pay heavy fines and penalties for garbage shortfalls (environmentalists across the spectrum view such contracts as wrong-headed disincentives to genuine recycling);
- separation of garbage and recycling contracts and separate competitive bidding for each;
- an emphasis on small-scale, flexible, even experimental programs and a commitment to push recycling to the max, eighty percent being an achievable short-term goal;
- a critical evaluation of that residue of garbage which cannot readily be recycled, with a view towards figuring out how to recycle it or replace it with a product or substance that can be recycled;
- a thorough analysis of toxic materials problems and a year-round, readily available (subsidized if necessary) toxic materials disposal network geared for our own county - wide toxic materials usage patterns and guided by a policy of cutting back on those usage patterns.
When the Macias and Miranda contract was moved on the consent calendar on Tuesday, February 1st, along with it came some very heavy policy baggage which will guarantee our Mendocino garbage will soon be heading for the corporate pyramids for a very long time to come. Why? Macias and Miranda's contract terms include a policy outline of "assumptions" which certainly implies corporate sector control of Mendocino's waste stream.
Next on the Agenda and currently making the headlines as this is written is the proposed privately funded Willits-based Materials Recovery Transfer Station, Mendocino's rail head to the pyramids. Long-term "put or pay" mega-dump tipping contracts, long-term rail haul contracts, long-term "public/private partnership" contracts controlling operations at the rail head, and ten-year no bid, no audit, local hauling contracts, all potentially with the very same company, spells a vertically-integrated corporate take-over of waste stream planning and operations in Mendocino County, endorsed by the haulers, endorsed by the consultants, endorsed by the county bureaucrats and endorsed by Supervisors Henry, Eddie, Sugarawa and McMichael. Only the people have been left out of the equation.
Is there a silver lining in any of this for local environmentalists? Hardly. Although representatives of the Mendocino Environment Center, the Willits Environment Center, the local chapter of the Sierra Club, Citizen's Action for Recycling and Trash, and the Association of Mendocino Recyclers testified in opposition to the terms of the ordinance and contracts, it was to no avail. Among others to testify were three supervisorial candidates, the publisher of a regional environmental newspaper and representatives of a regional hauling firm anxious to bid if contracts are ever to be put out to competitive bidding.
The environmental community was shut out of all but the most cursory (and legally required) opportunities to provide comments and suggestions in the process. The spectacle of Supervisor McMichael angrily wielding his gavel at Charlie Acker's mere mention of the word "mandatory" at the start of Fort Bragg's hearing on the franchises last October pretty much told its own story.
Even the absence of mandatory provisions in the ordinance is an all but hollow victory for citizens because it is clearly (like offshore oil) a permanent part of the corporate agenda and will become county policy as soon as three supervisors screw up enough courage to sneak it through on the consent calendar.
Four County Supervisors, all hoping to set unpopular policies without getting caught, flipped the solid waste hot potato to county bureaucrats, who tossed it off to the consultants, who in turn juggled it off to the haulers themselves. Back came the predictable response: long-term, no bid contracts without "actual audits" (county staff's term), and virtually no restrictions on a haulers' conduct. Please.
And so it came to be, in a framework of acrimony, secrecy, orchestrated newspaper bashings, embargoed documents, Freedom-of-Information Act lawsuits, and a widening gulf of mistrust between the voters, the politicians, the consultants, the haulers and the customers. Coming soon. Rate increases.
(Jonathan Shepard is a Member of the Board of the Association of Mendocino Recyclers)
Copyright Mendocino Environmental Center 1998
Permission granted to excerpt or use this article if source is cited