Ever
wonder what happens to your waste after it leaves your house or your body?
If you live in Aspen your byproducts end up at the Pitkin County Landfill.
Human waste is treated at the plant
behind the Aspen Airport Business Center. It is processed to a 'Class B'
sludge. (The class has to do with the amount of chemical breakdown and
bacteria reduction in the goo.)
The sludge is transferred to the Landfill,
(where all your other trash ends up) mixed with shredded paper and wood
chips, then cooked at 170 degrees until it becomes 'Class A' compost.
When I asked Landfill Operations Manager
Ken Bailey if that turned it into pure, unadulterated dirt he answered
"just about."
Some gardening and landscaping people
I know use the stuff and they say it works 'just about' like dirt.
That system seemed to be working pretty
well until a fire, that was according to Bailey, 'probably caused by spontaneous
combustion', sparked in the pile of wood and paper base materials.
I just happened to be at the dump that
afternoon. The fire turned big and smelly in a hurry. All kinds of things
were exploding and popping in the dump pile while noxious smoke flooded
the air.
Now the County has to decide what to
do. They need to either come up with a way to keep the base pile from combusting,
find another, less flammable base material, or find an alternate site.
It's hard to say how an alternate site would decrease the fire danger,
but if a site was dedicated to composting, the danger of half-rotten garbage
igniting would be eliminated.
What about my other waste?
Your other waste is piling up fast in
the 32-year-old dump. According to the authorities the dump has a life
of 10-30 more years depending on how much we can recycle and how well the
growing mound can be handled.
The dump is now in the dubious position
of having to deal with what Bailey calls, "coming out of the ground."
"For the past 30 years we've been filling
a valley, now we're creating a hill," he said.
Bailey also mentioned the challenges
brought forth by new, more strict government regulations. And although
he's ready to embrace the challenge, the bottom line is that the dump will
have to close pretty darn soon in the grand scheme of things.
Speaking of regulations, dumps were
not regulated much until recently. So what is at the bottom of our toxic
heap is anyone's guess.
Who's dumping there now?
This may surprise you, but according
to Bailey, the Pitkin County Landfill sees quite a bit of Carbondale trash.
Unfortunately, no one that I could reach over the last two days from Carbondale's
town government knew anything or would say anything about where their waste
is going. I did finally get through to a Pac-M representative who reluctantly
agreed that 'quite a bit' of Carbondale's trash ends up in the Pitkin County
Landfill. How much is quite a bit, I asked her. |
"It's a secret,"
she replied.
I don't think anyone wants us to know
that our landfill is racing to overflow levels with significant help from
outside the county.
Bailey said that the dump will take
any amount of almost anything from anywhere.
"It just depends on how much you want
to spend," he said pointing out that Pitkin County's rate schedule is higher
than some of the other alternatives, which may deter customers.
The only things you can't dump at our
landfill are nukes, medical waste, hazardous waste and asbestos.
All fulled up and no place to go.
County Commissioner Mick Ireland says
that there is nowhere in Pitkin County acceptable for a new dump site.
This may be a stupid question, but wouldn't our dump last longer if we
had a policy of accepting only Pitkin County trash? Dumb question number
2: Shouldn't the county be vigorously searching for a new site and or solution
to our long term garbage needs? I don't feel good about leaving our children
with a trashed dump and no practical solutions. Shipping our trash out
of the county in the future just feels like we're shunning our responsibilities
as humans.
I find it hard to believe that the county
would accept several-hundred--acre, single-family homesites at Wildcat
Ranch (directly adjacent to the dump) then tell us that pretty soon we
will have nowhere to dispose of our trash. Let's just snatch one of those
zillion dollar parcels and fill her up. It would probably look better than
one of those empty, monster homes.
What's that popping sound?
There's so much more to the dump than
meets the eye. Visitors may have noticed that there is a shooting range
for law enforcement up there. Law enforcement from other counties use our
shooting range too. Police forces from Carbondale, Glenwood Springs, Snowmass,
Basalt, Aspen, Pitkin County and others use the range for practice, training
and meeting firearms requirements.
What are the ecological ramifications
of thousands of rounds of leaden bullets lodged in the hill up there? The
bullets used for training are now jacketed with copper, supposedly reducing
the risks associated with lead contaminating the soil, but even copper
will break down eventually, leaving all that lead for future generations
to deal with. And how many bullets were fired into the hillside before
they were jacketed for our protection? |
Not only is the
shooting range almost certainly a future if not current environmental disaster,
but the potential for human tragedy exists as well. Within the last few
years, two Carbondale police officers shot themselves in the foot during
training exercises. If bullets can be accidentally shot down, they can
also be accidentally shot upward. Upward bullets almost always come down,
and being that there are dump employees and Aspen Village residents (where
I live) within trajectory range without helmets, I for one, am a bit nervous.
Especially when I hear about the kinds of weapons being fired up there.
That's another story all together, but we are well within accident range.
A bit of irony.
Within 250 yards of the shooting range
is a specially created landfill holding the EPA Smuggler superfund cleanup
site's contaminated lead soil. Great governmental expense went into keeping
that lead from getting into the surrounding soil, but no such precautions
were made for the lead from our weapons. So, almost within spitting distance
of the EPA superdirt, we are creating some superdirt of our very own.
Between the human risks and the ecological
ones, I for one would support an indoor range for our law enforcement.
Not only can they clean up their mess, but they won't be fouling our nests
or shooting us inadvertently.
What to do?
We should extend the life of the dump
by urging, encouraging and rewarding recycling, and accept only trash and
bullets only from our county. Until we find a bottomless pit, I don't see
why we should take other communities waste. If that makes me a NIMBY, so
be it. I don't like the idea of having to ship our trash out of town tomorrow
because we let everyone else fill up our dump today.
Call me old fashioned, but mamma said
that if you make a mess, clean it up yourself, don't dump it on someone
else. The county should listen to mamma and pursue finding us a place within
Pitkin County to handle Pitkin County's future trash needs. Otherwise,
and mark my words, we will be caught with our pants around our ankles wading
through a river of our own waste.
The dump won't last forever. Nothing
does. Being prepared is our only choice, as the costs of proceeding blindly
are absurdly high. History tells us that land will cost heaps more in 10-30
years. Maybe we should start looking into alternatives now, while land
is still affordable here in the valley (ha, ha).
I'm sure that a moratorium on all building
in the county until an answer is at hand would force a quick solution to
the problem. The laws of economics would generate a solution faster than
millions of hours of public meetings and debate.
The moratorium could read as follows:
"Pitkin County will allow no more building
until we find a place to put our shit."
An idea whose time has come? Write your
commissioner folks. |