Haddam’s Transfer Station: A Roadmap for Change
Posted on | August 6, 2008 |
Good Waste Management Needs Citizen Participation
(As published in the Haddam Bulletin August, 2008)
By John Friedlander
The transfer station dilemma has been brewing since 2000 with very little visible progress. Recent disclosures underscore two simple facts: the process to date has been too murky; and alternatives to current waste handling methods have not been adequately explored. The bottom line is that we don’t know enough about community waste management to make the informed decisions we will have to live with for years to come.
However, government, industry and other sources offer abundant information about solid waste management, as well as how to successfully handle transitions between outdated and current best practices in waste management systems.
Learning more about our relationship with garbage is critical. We will soon be forced to decide how to change our current waste management system to adjust to new economic, legal and environmental realities. The looming deadline to vacate our current transfer station site makes clear that leaving our current system unchanged is not an option.
Step One: Get Involved!
The first few sentences of the Environmental Protection Administration’s Decision Makers’ Guide to Solid Waste Management speak volumes about the best way to start:
“Developing integrated solutions for waste management problems requires public involvement. To economically and efficiently operate a waste management program requires significant cooperation from [waste] generators, regardless of the strategies chosen—buying products in bulk, separating recyclables from nonrecyclables, dropping off yard trimmings at a compost site, removing batteries from materials sent to a waste-to-energy facility, or using designated containers for collecting materials.”
“..when citizens become interested in their community’s waste management programs, they frequently demand to be involved in the decision-making process. Communities should anticipate such interest and develop procedures for involving the public. When the public is involved in program design, it helps ensure that programs run smoothly.”
The EPA guide identifies six stages of a successful education program, including:
• Building awareness of the need for change, and available alternatives
• Building interest in the discussion and satisfying curiosity about alternatives
• Evaluation by stakeholders of options available to them
• Testing of systems by users
• Adoption of regular use of systems by users
• Maintenance of proper use of systems
Throughout these educational steps, a team of organizers works to involve community members in ways that are relevant to each individual. It is important to recognize that without buy-in from both organizers and users, participation in whatever system is finally chosen may be low. Needless to say, low cooperation with a waste management system would be an intolerable risk to our local environment and the quality of life we expect in a town as beautiful as Haddam.
The EPA guide also makes the point that an “effective waste management [program] is a continuing process of public education, discussion and evaluation.” According to the EPA, facilitating public involvement is an eight-step process:
1. Concern: Waste management is put on the public agenda.
2. Involvement: Representatives of various interest groups (regulatory officials, individuals from neighboring communities, local waste management experts, representatives from environmental and business groups) are encouraged to participate.
3. Issue Resolution: Interest groups make their points of agreement and disagreement clear to each other and to program planners.
4. Alternatives: Groups should make a list of available alternatives, including “no action.”
5. Consequences: Economic and environmental consequences of each alternative are discussed.
6. Choice: Alternatives are decided upon.
7. Implementation: The steps necessary to carry out the program are described and potential adverse impacts are mitigated, if possible.
8. Evaluation: The community should continually evaluate the program and solicit input.
Note that the steps listed do not focus on where a waste facility should be located, but rather on the entire process of waste management, from source to final resting place. In fact, the EPA guide makes the point that inviting public participation only when a site selection decision needs to be made is an approach fraught with peril.
“Public involvement is too frequently confined to the facility siting process. Participation of local residents should begin earlier, when program developers are deciding which overall waste management strategy will best meet the community’s economic and environmental needs.”
The EPA recognizes that siting debates can be difficult.
“Choosing a site without input from residents and then weathering intense opposition has been called the “decide-announce-defend” strategy. Although this strategy has been used extensively in the past, the increasing sophistication of groups opposed to certain waste management alternatives makes this approach more difficult.”
The DEP takes one to three months to review General Permit applications for transfer stations sized to suit Haddam’s needs, and 12 to 18 months for applications which request exceptions to standard practices. Because legal challenges to whatever sites are proposed in Haddam are highly likely, the chances of having a smooth transition from our current transfer station to a new “final” system by autumn of 2009 are low. The best that can be realistically hoped for is that an open, transparent process along the lines of EPA’s guidelines is started as soon as possible so that the duration of a temporary solution can be kept short.
Source Reduction is Key
One of the most important elements of a successful waste management system is to reduce the overall quantity of waste that needs to be handled.
According to the CT DEP, each of us discards an average of six pounds of material each day, a quantity which has been rising steadily since measurement began in 1998. This equates to over four tons of waste per year for a family of four.
With the Connecticut Resources Recovery Authority’s February, 2008 tipping fee increase to $76 per ton, this represents a potential cost of approximately $582,000 for Haddam to discard waste for one year. Rapidly rising energy prices are also driving up the cost of trucking waste to regional facilities for processing. Reducing the quantity of waste we discard will have a direct effect on these costs.
Experts point out that tipping fees don’t include real costs that are harder to quantify, but that still impact our pocketbooks. Portions of municipal waste are toxic, and contaminate air and water, causing health problems. Many believe high rates of asthma are related to combustion of waste at plants that convert waste to energy, while producing tons of ash residues. With insurance and medical costs rising, the price of health problems caused by environmental contaminants must be factored into the economic quality of life we enjoy – or endure.
Open Questions
Among the many questions Haddam will need to discuss are:
• Given that rising costs of living are on everyone’s mind, how can we best control the cost of the entire process: researching, proposing and implementing solutions, and living with the operational costs of our final choice? How can we avoid being penny-wise and pound-foolish?
• Since we have to pay to discard our waste, how much can we reduce that cost by reducing the amount of waste we produce?
• For those wastes that will never go “away,” and can only be relocated, what are the most cost-efficient and environmentally responsible ways to relocate this waste?
• Other kinds of waste can be reused or converted to another useful form. How can we efficiently keep this kind of waste separate from waste which cannot be reused or converted?
• Can revenues produced by the “Reuse” and “Convert” portions of our waste stream be used to help offset the expense of the “Relocate” portions?
• Haddam is a member of the 70-town Mid-Connecticut Project, which contracts with CRRA for waste disposal. Is it possible for our town to cooperate with neighboring towns to achieve waste management solutions which might not be cost-effective to do on our own?
• The model of our current transfer station is outdated and will have to change, and our waste-handling habits may also need to change in response to new economic and environmental realities. How can we best assist residents in making these adjustments?
• Excessive and wasteful consumption are not compatible with generations-old Yankee lifestyles. How can we design Haddam’s next waste management system to be consistent with our region’s long-held traditional values?
It is not too late
The analysis to date of proposed sites for a transfer station could be easily updated if a community-wide consensus ultimately emerges that a site is needed for a waste-handling facility. And current widespread interest in the subject could help launch an organized community discussion that would be a critical part of a successful transition process.
But there has been little public involvement in the process to date, and there is deep public distrust of the proposals expected to be made. Further, nearly all of the most important questions about Haddam’s waste management needs have not been completely answered.
Given these facts, we should consider the efforts to date as a valuable learning curve best put behind us, and to move rapidly to begin a new process grounded in openness, transparency and cooperation. Using the depth of experience contained in the EPA’s “Decision Makers’ Guide to Solid Waste Management”, we can overcome together what has proven impossible to date.
Further reading:
EPA Decision Makers’ Guide to Solid Waste Management
A small town learns the hard way how not to relocate its transfer station
How 4th graders can lead a revolution in municipal waste management
Tags: democracy > DEP > EPA > garbage > public involvement > public participation > recycle > recycling > transfer station > waste management > Waste Stream
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