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Commentary
Trashing Landfills Producing Community Crapshoot
By Benita M. Dodd
We Georgians don’t talk trash very much. We tie the bags, put the can at the curb and expect it to be someone else’s problem – except when the garbage truck doesn’t pick up. As long as it’s out of sight, it’s out of mind.
But in DeKalb County, Georgia’s largest landfill looms as testimony to a growing dilemma for urban communities: Given the movement toward fewer, larger, regional landfills, how do communities continue to tackle their trash without residents raising a stink?
Waste Management Inc.’s Live Oak Landfill is situated on 200 acres, on property split by the DeKalb-Fulton county line. The landfill is no festering sore: On a daily basis, the working face measures just 100 feet by 300 feet. It’s conveniently located next to I-285, with neighbors including an airport, a trucking company, a water treatment plant, an asphalt plant, a BFI landfill – and several hundred dissatisfied area residents who want Live Oak shut down.
Until last year, the landfill, which accepts 1.25 million tons of trash annually, was the disposal site for Atlanta’s trash and sewage sludge. Neighbors complained about the stench; in April 2002, activists protested outside the Capitol. With appropriate campaign-season indignation, Gov. Roy Barnes promised to close the landfill as soon as possible and ordered the Environmental Protection Division to investigate.
The EPD found eight violations. Among them: that Live Oak was slow in covering waste; was not reducing the landfill working face at night; did not ensure that arriving sludge trucks used appropriate tarps; had too few gas collection-and-control wells in older areas; and could not produce some maintenance records.
The governor magnanimously announced that Live Oak would have to close shop in December 2004. Coincidentally, a report by the Department of Community Affairs, which calculates the life of landfills, had projected that Live Oak would reach capacity in December 2004.
Such election-year proclamations are routine, but the glitch is that the DCA’s projections are updated annually. Compaction technologies improve and waste disposal patterns change. In July 2002, the DCA reported Live Oak would reach capacity in October 2006. New DCA estimates say September 2006. Waste Management, for its part, says Live Oak need not close until the end of 2007.
The company has appealed the EPD’s order to close the landfill, as well as its proposed fines for the violations – an unprecedented $1.245 million.
Like any business, Waste Management is reluctant to close a lucrative facility over violations that normally would not warrant shutting down a state-of-the-art facility. The sensible solution would seem to be a meaningful penalty and EPD oversight of company remedies while the landfill continues to operate. But “environmental justice” complaints resonate in election season.
And, “To the residents’ credit, we did have to get the odor under control,” admits Waste Management spokeswoman Erika Cook.
The company invested $1.5 million in odor control measures and cut sludge contracts from 20 percent to 4 percent of intake. An 8,000-foot-long misting system deodorizes the perimeter; more than 100 methane gas extraction wells are operating and 20 groundwater monitors are in place. Fences trap flying trash, trucks spray water to minimize dust; workers patrol the area to pick up stray garbage.
The measures are working: On July 14, with highs in Atlanta at 84 degrees, the landfill that takes in 900 truckloads of trash daily was emitting less of an odor than the typical residential garbage can.
An administrative judge is expected to rule on the closure order in the fall. The outcome could impact far more than Waste Management’s bottom line. It’s the difference between the entire metro Atlanta air quality non-attainment region being in the frying pan or in the fire.
Of the 900 trucks arriving daily, about 200 are city of Atlanta garbage trucks. Other customers include the airport, industries and construction sites, Georgia Tech, Georgia State and Emory universities.
If the closure order is upheld, cash-strapped Atlanta must quickly come up with an alternative for the 250,000 tons of trash it trucks to Live Oak ever year. Not only will it add to ratepayers’ financial burden, but the environmental cost is likely to be even more than environmental justice activists anticipated.
Alternatives are few and far between. As communities around the nation have discovered, political fallout can rule out support of a new area landfill. An incinerator is an environmental no-no in a non-attainment area. Nobody wants a waste transfer station built anywhere near anybody. (Atlanta’s six-month moratorium on waste transfer stations expires in September, when a task force will offer solutions.)
Trucking trash to other landfills adds to the costs. Georgia Tech researchers, commissioned by Waste Management, reported that if Atlanta continued doing business with the company, waste would be trucked 45 miles to the Pine Bluff Landfill in Cherokee County, raising costs about $10 per ton. Atlanta already has raised its residential base rate by 24 percent. And that isn’t enough. The $258.59 per year is lower than the city’s consultants’ break-even proposal of $291 per year plus road frontage and recycling fees – assuming no increase in costs for transportation or disposal.
Cost increases for the other customers would total $6 million per year, the study found.
Worse, researchers said trucking out the waste destined for Live Oak would require 60,000 truck trips per year – singlehandedly adding 300 tons of nitrogen oxides every year to the non-attainment area and sabotaging the state’s air-quality plan. The EPD has proposed a goal of 225 tons or less of NOx emissions a day for the region to reach federal air quality standards. The addition would be a significant setback.
The good news is that the EPD estimates that landfills in the metro area have 19 years of capacity left. There is no immediate shortage of landfill space. But as the metro area’s population grows, residents continue to assume trash is someone else’s problem. Solutions are coming, but take time. Recycling and education are not enough, and innovative technological alternatives are being developed.
Meanwhile, Atlantans and other communities seeking solutions must insist that policy-makers don’t dump this challenge in the convenient lap of political expediency.
Benita M. Dodd is vice president of the Georgia Public Policy Foundation, an independent think tank that proposes practical, market-oriented approaches to public policy to improve the lives of Georgians. Nothing written here is to be construed as necessarily reflecting the views of the Georgia Public Policy Foundation or as an attempt to aid or hinder the passage of any bill before the U.S. Congress or the Georgia Legislature.
© Georgia Public Policy Foundation (August 15, 2003). Permission to reprint in whole or in part is hereby granted, provided the author and her affiliations are cited.