LAST MONDAY, I WROTE THAT THE city’s “green” image was all rhetoric and little action. I wrote that statistical information from the City’s Solid Waste Management was incomplete, deliberately confusing and contradictory — in essence, a shell game.
Bottom line is the city’s record on sus-tainability including all those "environmentally friendly" things such as resource reduction, recycling and not polluting the environment fell far short of City Hall’s boasts.
Although the city talks a good line, the truth is that its lousy record on most things “green” goes back years. In December, 1993, Craig Perkins, the City’s Director of Solid Waste Management, wrote a letter to Water Quality Control Board inspector who criticized the City Yard and Transfer Station. Perkin’s response appeared to promise to fix problems such as waste exposed to rainfall because of a lack of a roof and a drain that allowed hazardous and toxic effluent to run into the bay, untreated, Although Perkins told the AQMD his facility would be covered by October, 1996, It’s still unroofed. Hazardous chemicals still end up in the bay at Pico Boulevard untreated, especially when it rains and the SMRF treatment plant overflows.
On June 15, 2005, I wrote in this space, "The present City yard and transfer station is where trash is sorted, separated and prepared for recycling or transport to a landfill is in terrible shape. There’s no roof. Dust becomes airborne and isn’t adequately monitored." Being it takes in construction and demolition waste, one fears that airborne particles from the facility may contain asbestos fibers, a known carcinogen, that can dissipate for miles in prevailing breezes.
Environmental problems are not confined to the city yards. Rainwater runoff from parking lots in the newly renovated Virginia Park drain into neighborhood streets and gutters. The city’s traffic jam-ming policies is responsible for tons of exhaust pollutants that spew into the atmosphere, annually.
With all this, one has to ask, “Where’s the oversight? Where are city politicians with their sustainable, “green” agenda? And, are we going to continue to make bad decisions and costly mistakes?
Nevertheless, despite all the issues. city staff has still recommended to City Council that the city’s Solid Waste Management Division continue to handle collection as well as transfer, recycling and disposal services for Santa Monica’s garbage.
Tuesday night, the council will discuss how to handle Santa Monica’s refuse. It’s item 3-A on their agenda. Numerous options are on the table as put forth by an “independent” evaluation committee in the item’s staff report (available online.) All will affect quality of service, the environment and cost us for decades to come.
The committee says commercial trash collection would be best handled by the city with an option for a private company to compete with the city. Currently, several private companies are competing to provide commercial collection. If a second private firm were to be added, Athens Services, Inc., a City of Industry operation with a record of union-busting and environmental violations, was recommended as the “second ranked” provider by the committee.
Transfer and disposal services which includes sorting and material recovery also had a number of options. The city could farm this out or handle it in an “improved” City Yard and Transfer Station, itself. Or, it could share the operation with a private partner. The evaluation committee recommended the city handle this function, especially materials recovery — or “recycling” to you and me. This, means spending tens of millions of dollars to roof the city yard and bring it up to present day standards and environmental requirements.
As an alternative, the committee recommended the city’s Solid Waste Management Division and one or more of two non-Santa Monica based firms and Santa Monica based, Southern California Disposal share recycling, transfer and disposal functions.
City Council has some difficult decisions making, but I can’t help but get a whiff of politics behind this report. The conspicuous absence of a more active roll for locally owned SCD with its clean environmental record (and who happens to be right next door to the current city yard) is puzzling but not surprising.
I’m uncomfortable with the committee’s proposals and I see a wide open door for the city to expand its solid waste operations, but at what cost to Mother Earth and the taxpayers of the community?
Considering the history, I can’t help but feeling we’re all going to be trashed.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on October 29, 2007. Read the original PDF.