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Barging Trash: The Virginia Backlash
"How we're defined as humans," said University of Arizona archaeologist William Rathje on National Public Radio's Diane Rehm show, "Is, we throw away stuff." A longtime student of what and how we trash, Rathje thinks that even though "all landfills do or eventually will leak," they represent "a way of balancing out economics and consumption" and has little apprehension about what modern and well-regulated ones contain. But to many who might agree with such sentiments, including an indignant current crop of Virginians, getting the trash to the dump by road or by water involves environmental hazards and headaches
In a spirited reaction to Mayor Rudolph Guiliani's proposal that shipments from New York City to their landfills should triple, thus causing the Old Dominion to surpass Pennsylvania as the nation's leading state in garbage imports, Virginia's legislators recently passed a series of bills to preserve the status quo. Measures backed by an enthusiastic Republican Governor James S. Gilmore III to cap imports, tighten up on garbage truck traffic, and ban the use of garbage barges on the James, Rappahannock, and York Rivers all sailed through both state houses during the recently completed winter session
Some opposing the barge ban were struck by the fact that one macro-bargeload of garbage can take 300 trucks off already congested highways. Not so attorney Sterling E. Rives III, who one day last summer was swimming off a boat on the James. He raised his head and saw "what looked like a giant wall moving up the river." The sighting was consistent with industry plans calling for "barges the size of an office building—300 feet long by 100 feet wide, containing 300 containers six or seven to the stack"—to haul New York's trash to landfills on the James and perhaps elsewhere along eastern Virginia's extensive system of waterways.
Odor is one strike against uncovered barges, whose cargo has sometimes been aboard for as long as two weeks before they reach the James, Rives says, and rainfall can cause leachate to drain directly into the water. Industry representatives say that new tightly sealed containers will eliminate both these problems. But Rives has other gripes. A serious accident in a confined waterway involving a barge containing 6000 tons of garbage would, he continues, "be an environmental catastrophe that could never be cleaned up." He is skeptical of industry claims that tugs can maintain full control of the giant barges while operating in crowded waters. And he fears that a continuation of what has been sporadic garbage barge traffic in Virginia waters could lead in increments to barging in all New York City's annual output of 12 million tons. "That's a lot," he says.
The state's new determination to control trash imports, he concludes, is a refreshing change from prior policies that "discouraged recycling and source reduction by making it so cheap and easy to ship garbage to Virginia." Now at last, he concludes, "we are starting to take pride in our natural resources, and taking steps to protect them." |
