Many East Coast Cities Running Out of Space, Answers for Trash

America loathes trash.

Once it leaves our garbage cans and dumpsters, we pay scant attention to what happens to the billions of tons a year of rubbish generated by our throwaway society.

The sooner it is hauled out of sight, the faster it is out of mind.

But mounds of solid waste are no longer invisible. Some East Coast cities, large and small, are having trouble finding an eternal resting place for their trash.

Space Is Vanishing

Landfill space nationally is vanishing at a time when politics and public perceptions seem as big a problem as the waste itself:

- There is strong resistance to both the opening of new landfills and construction of resource recovery incinerators that convert waste into energy.

- Rural states that used to accept trash generated by more urban neighbors are slamming the lid on that practice.

“The response to solid waste to date has been an incredibly disjointed process, like a drunkard lurching from one lamppost to the next. There has been no thoughtful program developed by many states,” says Douglas Foy, executive director of the Conservation Law Foundation of New England.

Pressing for Closure

Foy’s group has been pressing for the closure of municipal landfills in New England that its studies have deemed a threat to ground water supplies.

“Nobody has been willing to attack the problem as a whole--what do we do with solid waste generally,” Foy says. “Existing landfills were poorly designed, poorly sited, inadequate to the task of containment. They should be closed.”

In Pennsylvania, more than 800 landfills have closed since 1970 and only 130 are still in use. Counties are under state orders to wean themselves of landfill reliance and move toward recycling and trash-to-energy plants by 1996.

Philadelphia, crowded out of landfills in neighboring New Jersey, sent four 1,000-ton barge loads of trash to a landfill in Oak Ridge, S.C., last spring. The City of Brotherly Love, whose dumping fees have run as high as $143 a ton, now pays spot market prices to send its excess trash 98 miles to the Baltimore Municipal Incinerator.

On populous Long Island, east of New York City, communities face a 1990 deadline to halt dumping of raw garbage at landfills in order to help preserve ground water. The town of Oyster Bay now pays $21 million a year to truck all of its garbage to dumps in Pennsylvania because it no longer has any landfill space.

‘Hauler’s Problem’

“It’s really everybody’s problem. Yet, as far as they are concerned, as soon as we put (it) in our trucks, it is ‘a hauler’s problem,’ ” said James Harvey, Massachusetts chapter chairman of the National Solid Waste Management Assn., a haulers’ trade group.

Without adequate regional and local planning, other parts of the country may soon face the same trash dilemma that New England is grappling with. Much of the regional problem stems from Massachusetts’ inability over the last five years to provide adequate disposal for its own trash.

Several thousand tons of rubbish generated daily by Massachusetts businesses, schools, hospitals, restaurants and dwellings sit festering in garbage trucks or at transfer stations because it has nowhere to go.

The number of licensed Massachusetts landfills has decreased in five years from 450 to 202. The state estimates that half of the remaining landfills have pollution problems and three-quarters are expected to run out of space by 1990.

State Bureau of Solid Waste figures show that landfills, recycling centers and trash-to-energy resource recovery incinerators now operating can handle only 5 million of the 6 million tons of solid waste generated per year.

The surplus, averaging between 3,000 and 5,000 tons per day, has been trucked to landfills in Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and, to a lesser extent, Vermont.

Equal to SS Norway

Over the course of one calendar month, the amount of trash trucked outside Massachusetts borders exceeds the 70,202 gross-ton capacity of the SS Norway, the world’s largest cruise ship.

“Massachusetts loves to get other people to take care of its problems,” said Harvey, owner of a Westborough hauling firm. “The state has never encouraged us to go out of state, but their inaction forced us to find sites elsewhere.”

The welcome mat is being withdrawn.

On Sept. 12, Rhode Island barred any out-of-state dumping at its state-run Central Landfill because of space concerns. It assigned state police to turn back trucks at the border in hope of halting an estimated 1,000 tons of Massachusetts trash a day.

Some Rhode Island-based haulers continue to defy the ban and are challenging its constitutionality. On Nov. 18, three owners and three drivers from two Rhode Island trash companies were led into court in handcuffs, charged with illegally importing tons of Massachusetts trash into the state-run landfill.

‘Getting Creative’

“The haulers are getting very creative in getting past us,” said Dante Ionata, program coordinator with the Rhode Island Solid Waste Management Corp. “They’re mixing their Massachusetts paper in with the sloppy restaurant mess. Our inspectors don’t want to go through all that goo.”

In spite of the arrests, and the trash ban, the state agency estimates that 200 to 400 tons of Massachusetts solid waste is still finding its way to the Rhode Island landfill each day.

Maine is also closing the lid. The state has imposed a moratorium on new landfills pending a study of its options.

“I don’t want Maine to be a big town dump for the rest of New England,” Gov. Joseph Brennan told a joint session of the Maine Legislature.

The biggest thorn in developing new facilities in hard-pressed Massachusetts is a state law giving all siting powers--and vetoes--to local cities and towns.

‘Political Problem’

“The state has not stepped into the gap and taken over that responsibility. It is a political problem, not a health or environmental problem,” said Peter Watson, vice president of Browning-Ferris Industries, one of the nation’s major trash haulers.

One damp November morning, Watson measured a 3,000-ton heap of trash--looming 35 feet high--at the BFI transfer station adjacent to the railroad yard in neighboring Cambridge. It was waste being stored by BFI until landfill capacity opened up.

The Massachusetts system is so fragile now that if one local landfill cuts off commercial waste or an incinerator shuts down unexpectedly, haulers are left with truckloads of trash they can’t dump.

“There isn’t enough interim capacity while you’re developing resource recovery projects. By their inaction, local municipalities have abrogated their responsibility over this vital public service. The state must now step in--forcefully and quickly,” Watson said.

The haulers claim that the state has taken an ostrich-like attitude for several years, ignoring their need for landfill space. Massachusetts officials argue that the state has been working to alleviate the crunch.

Shifting Emphasis

Three years ago, the state began to shift its disposal emphasis from landfills to recycling and incinerators. Massachusetts now has four resource recovery plants with a combined daily capacity of 6,640 tons in operation. Three others with a 3,240-ton total are under construction. Two more, totaling 3,000-tons, are seeking financing. All are private initiatives.

“Massachusetts now has more resource recovery plants than any other state in the country, whether calculated by tonnage or number of facilities. There is a likelihood that by 1990, 50% of our trash will be going to recovery facilities,” said Alan Johnson, state undersecretary for environmental affairs.

The Catch-22 with this program is that most of the capacity of the resource recovery plants being built or planned is already committed to communities that will soon close their landfills.