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It
appears that neither of those legislative steps are in the
offing any time soon and the proposed expansion clearly runs
counter to prevailing public opinion, at least in southeastern
Brandywine Hundred and northeastern Wilmington, the areas in
closest proximity to the landfill.
Vasuki
took the lead and represented the authority in that hot spot on
Aug. 20 during what was billed as one of four simultaneous
public hearings on the project held in Wilmington and its
vicinity. The hearings were mandated by the legislature and the
authority was roundly criticized by lawmakers and others for its
decision to get them all over with at one time. Vasuki responded
by saying he expected criticism wherever and whenever the
sessions were scheduled, but he did offer several times during
the evening to appear or send a representative to any community
organization which so requested.
The authority has applied to the
state Department of Natural Resources & Environmental Control
for permission to enlarge the dump, off Interstate 495 south of
Edgemoor, and make several design and
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technical
improvements at an estimated cost of $66 million. The authority,
a quaspublic agency, is self-financed.
The major sticking point with
objectors to the expansion is that the mound would grow over the
next 34 years or so from its present height 90 feet above sea
level to 290 feet. The existing limit is 176 feet, which Vasuki
said will result in its running out of room to handle trash in
2006.
He told the hearing that expansion
was one of nine options explored and the only one that is
practical and makes economic and ecological sense. Roy Jackson,
a resident of the area, expressed the views of several other
attenders at the hearing by characterizing expansion as
"insane."
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Alan Muller, of Green
Delaware, (left) debates with N.C. Vasuki during a public
hearing on proposed expansion of the Cherry Island Marsh
landfill. |
Vasuki
said that, given public and political support, several options
could be pursued concurrently with expansion to further increase
the life expectancy of the landfill. Wally Kramer, spokesman for
the Council of Civic Organizations of Brandywine Hundred, who
said "the landfill has to be expanded -- that is reality," urged
that those other things also be done.
Vasuki
agreed that recycling, especially of paper and yard waste which
make up about half of what is thrown away, would alleviate much
of the pressure. But he said voluntary recycling programs, such
as the disposal igloos and limited fee-supported curbside
pickups which the authority runs, have very limited
effectiveness. On the other hand, he said, "county government is
ideally situated" to put a mandatory program, such as exist in
many local jurisdictions around the nation, into effect. "The
authority is not authorized to do things like that under state
law," he said.
For
starters, such a program could be based on a mandatory
assessment on residential property owners, whether or not they
avail themselves of the service, sufficient to cover the cost of
county government's contracting with a trash-hauling company to
collect recyclables. Dividing the county into trash districts
would split up the business among the three major and 36 smaller
companies now operating here, he said. It would be optional
whether the districts also used a single contracted hauler for
regular collections.
He did
caution against single-source contracting in a business that has
become largely consolidated and is tending toward being
monopolistic.
Incineration technology has advanced to the point where
converting trash to energy by burning it "is the best long-term
solution," Vasuki said. "Incinerators operate very efficiently"
and with minimal environmental impact.
Environmental activist Alan Muller, who claimed credit for
getting that practice banned during the 1980s, challenged Vasuki
on that point. He said the incinerator in Lancaster County, Pa.,
which Vasuki had cited as a model, emits large quantities of
dangerous pollutants.
Several
times during the hearing, Muller and Libby Merkel debated
technical and other points Vasuki made. Both sides of the
arguments included disparaging comments about each other's
competence and veracity, but the exchanges were conducted in the
style of old adversaries who had gone at it long enough to be on
a first-name basis.
Vasuki
said such options as trucking waste to landfills in other states
and building a new one elsewhere in New Castle County had been
considered but rejected. Proposing a new site, he said, would
draw even more opposition than expanding the present one. In
fact, he added, virtually everything the authority proposes or
does, except routinely accepting an average 1,200 pounds of
household waste discarded annually by every county resident, is
suspect and criticized. "No matter what we do, people object,"
he said.
With
regard to the other major complaint with the dump, Vasuki
acknowledged responsibility for obnoxious odors. "I'm sorry it
(the landfill) has created a problem for the neighborhood. We're
trying to do our best to minimize the problem," he said.
Specifically, he explained, the authority installed 63 wells
last year and will put in 25 more this year to capture methane
and other gasses generated underground by decomposing waste. The
gas is piped to the adjacent Conectiv Energy electricity
generating plant, at a current rate of about 5 million cubic
feet a day, and used as fuel.
He said
Cherry Island Marsh is "probably the most instrumented site in
the county today" as a result of the authority's effort to find
and capture gases. He also said that it is instituting a
tree-planting program, similar to one that has significantly
approved the appearance of the now-unused Pigeon Point landfill
adjacent to the approach to the Delaware Memorial Bridges.
Vasuki
said landfills, by their nature, inevitably will produce some
odor but said the industrial area around it generates "a whole
bunch of different odors" and uncontrollable weather conditions
often acerbate the situation.
However,
state representative David Ennis, a long-time resident who
represents the area just north of and often downwind from the
landfill, charged that emissions from it are far more extensive
and serious than merely an odiferous nuisance. "If this
operation were a for-profit business and [it] had befouled the
air as badly as the [authority] has done in Edgemoor, I am
convinced the state of Delaware would have taken far more
aggressive action sooner [and] with higher levels of fines and
punishment," he wrote in a letter to the authority presented at
the hearing.
Ennis and
others at the session linked correction of alleged management
deficiencies at the site with granting qualified approval for a
scaled-down version of the proposed expansion. "If you can't
[properly] manage what you have now, why should we let you have
more?" said one woman, who claimed the area around the landfill
is the worst-smelling in the Northeast Corridor.
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The Cherry Island
Marsh landfill |
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