May 16, 2010
County booms, landfill
looms
Middle Point a 'necessary evil'
Vast farmland and quiet neighborhoods along East Jefferson Pike hide a "necessary evil" in Rutherford County.
The Middle Point Landfill is a giant earthen mound in the Walter Hill community that grows every day with each new truck hauling tons and tons of debris and garbage from across the Midstate to be buried there.
Situated near the Stones River, the landfill has been scrutinized and criticized for its possible effects on Murfreesboro's lone water source, but at the same time praised for its cost-saving presence. Without the local landfill, county residents could face some $4 million annually in tippng fees.
"The landfill is a necessary evil as long as we throw away as much as we do," said Linda Stevens, the treasurer of Recycle Rutherford, a local group that promotes reusing materials instead of throwing them in the trash.
"Since it's here, we need to appreciate the financial benefits of it being here. It helps keep our taxes down. As soon as it closes, we can expect our taxes to skyrocket."
Sometimes referred to as "Mount Trashmore," the landfill is a looming, but necessary presence in one of the state's fastest growing and most populated counties.
"The remaining life of the landfill is closer to 20 years," said Peg Mulloy, a spokeswoman for Middle Point owner, Phoenix-based Republic Services, Inc. The publicly traded $19.5 billion corporation merged with Allied Waste in December 2008 and operates in 40 states and Puerto Rico.
Middle Point through the years has provided local cost-effective waste disposal to avoid trucking trash out of Rutherford County, yet the landfill stirs up fear from Not In My Back Yard (NIMBY) residents. Many were outraged in 2007 to learn that Allied Waste was accepting low-level radioactive waste at its Middle Point landfill by the Stones River, Murfreesboro's water supply. In response to the negative perception, the company elected to stop taking the state regulated "Bulk Survey For Release" waste in question as part of the 160 garbage truckloads it takes in per business day to dispose of 3,200 tons of trash from 19 counties in Middle Tennessee.
About half of the daily garbage comes from a growing Rutherford County of roughly 250,000 people. Many recycling advocates see that waste collection number as being way too high.
"Our children or our grandchildren are going to be mining our landfills for resources," Stevens said.
Stevens considers herself to be a NIMBY when it comes to the landfill yet accepts that it's here and needs to remain in operation for as long as possible to avoid trucking it far away.
The county and Murfreesboro are saving a combined $4 million to $4.5 million in tipping fees for dumping nearly 70,000 tons of trash, County Solid Waste Director Mac Nolen said.
The county also picks up $1.20 per ton collected at the landfill from outside the county, which comes to about $900,000 per year in revenues. Combined, the solid waste departments are spending about $9 million annually. If they had to ship it out of the county, Nolen estimates the total cost would come to $20 million to cover tipping fees and trucking costs. That equates with about a 19 cent hike to the existing $2.735 property tax rate per $100 of assessed value. A home owner with a $150,000 house would pay about $71 more per year for the government to haul it out of the county.
The local governments would also have to invest in a transfer station, so the smaller garbage trucks could drop off loads for larger tractor trailers to haul to out-of-county landfills.
"We'd have to buy more trucks and hire more people," said Nolen, who's requesting a $3.4 million budget for next year. "It would be substantially more than what it costs us now."
He's leery of the "Mount Trashmore" references.
"The trash in this county is a whole lot cheaper than anywhere else because of that landfill," Nolen said.
Republic Services provides 275 jobs at its Murfreesboro and Nashville operations, said Mulloy, the company spokeswoman.
"The important thing to keep in mind about the landfill is, it's a necessary part of managing waste," she said. "It's an important member of the community. It employs people. It sends money back to the community. When it's operating in an environmentally friendly manner such ours, it's an important component of a community. It's an economic driver. You provide jobs. You provide revenues and stability."
A local landfill also makes it easier for Murfreesboro to recruit Fortune 500 companies that are mindful of shipping costs to landfills, said Joey Smith, the city's solid waste director.
"That is one of the big advantages we have in Rutherford County," said Smith, who oversees department with about a $5.3 million budget that included hauling 35,500 tons of trash last year to Middle Point Landfill. "As much as people don't like it, (Middle Point) has been a big asset to the community as a whole." Most people, Smith said, are concerned about whether they get their trash out on the street on time to be picked up each week than they are about the landfill.
"What we used to call a dump no longer is applicable to that," Smith said. "It's a very well engineered system. Until something comes along that's better, I'm sorry but we're going to have landfills probably for my lifetime and probably my daughter's."
Knowing the landfill will be filled in about a generation, Smith, Nolen, Stevens and others are promoting recycling, so that the future cost of shipping trash out of the county can be reduced.
A retired Murfreesboro resident, Stevens would like to see cost incentives to get people to recycle. She supports the Tennessee General Assembly passing a bottle bill, for example, that would require a nickel deposit on beverage containers, which is similar to what her former home state Michigan does to cut down on litter.
"The amount of clutter on our roads compared to there is like day and night," said Stevens, a former member of the Regional Solid Waste Planning Board for Rutherford, Cannon, Warren and portions of Coffee counties. "I don't understand it. The recycling rate for beverage containers is less than 30 percent in Tennessee. In states that have bottle bills, the recycling rate is between 70 to 80 percent for the beverage containers." Charity groups could serve as the redemption centers where people get their money back for returning beverage containers, Stevens said, who also feels grocery stores might even want to serve in that role by offering credits on the deposits to be used on buying merchandise.
She also favors the convenience centers charging for trash drop off but giving people credits for recycling. If they bring in a bag of recycling commodities, for example, they'd get credit for dropping off one bag of trash at no cost.
Murfreesboro's recycling efforts have centered on its brush collections for its mulching operation on Florence Road. It's generating 20,000 to 24,000 tons per year typically, and last year it reached 30,000 tons after taking in about 9,000 tons from the Good Friday tornado, said Smith, the city's solid waste director.
Although Murfreesboro crews pick up trash and brush, the city has not chosen to do curbside recycling because of the costs, especially having to ship the commodities out of the county.
Other cities have operations to sort the recycling materials in blue bags out from the trash, but Smith said it would be an expensive investment to build a "dirty MRF (Multiple Recycling Facility)."
"A lot of people have gone away from those because of the cost," said Smith, adding that sorting centers face the same level of regulations and permit requirements as landfills.
Curbside recycling, though, is available through businesses, such as such as PBT (People for a Better Tomorrow). PBT has served Murfreesboro, La Vergne and Smyrna and surrounding areas since 2000 and charges $144 for a yearly subscription, which averages $12 per month, according to its Web site.
Nolen, the county's solid waste director, said most people would be better off hiring a curbside recycling service than to sort out the commodities at public drop-off areas.
"Your time has value," Nolen said. "It's my belief that it's cheaper to pay somebody to pick it up at the curb."
Nolen will soon be equipping extra steel bins at the Almaville, Lascassas and Cranor Road convenience centers, so that the county government will offer a total of 16 locations that take all six commodities. Among those will be the Haley Road location that takes electronic waste on Tuesdays and Saturdays, and Nolen has long-range plans for it to be a drop off location for paint, antifreeze, used cooking oil and used motor oil.
The Leanna and Rockvale convenience centers are too small for the extra steal bins to take all commodities, but it's possible the Rockvale one could be expanded by relocating it on county land across the street or by taking over all the land it currently shares with the Rockvale Volunteer Fire Department by having the fire department relocate across the street.
The convenience centers are more efficient than the unmanned locations because staff can operate cardboard compactors that enable steel bins to be thoroughly full and cut down on shipping costs.
The goal for Nolen will be to provide ample recycling opportunities at the manned convenience centers, so the unmanned locations can close. The problem with the unmanned locations is that far too many people contaminate them, such as mixing cardboard beer bottle containers along with the glass in the same bin instead of separating them. Some people even dump trash into them, he said.
"It's a huge problem," said Nolen, who's even had to ship everything in commodity bins to Middle Point because the trash contamination is overwhelming. "We're spending money on a daily basis to pay somebody to dig out that contamination."
When counting Murfreesboro's convenience center on West Main Street to the west of Broad Street and MTSU's drop off location, the county will have a total of 18 places that take all six commodities, Nolen said.
Just as the local governments encourage recycling, Republic Services boasts its services to help the environment, including: florescent light bulb recycling, composting and converting of Middle Point landfill's methane gas into 2.4 megawatts of electricity per day for up to 1,200 homes through the oversight of the Tennessee Valley Authority.
"It's a renewable energy resource right there at the landfill," said Mulloy, the Republic Services spokeswoman. "We don't refer to ourselves as a waste company but as an environmental services company. We are trying to address different segments of the waste stream to be good stewards of the environment. The days of putting a hole in the ground for trash don't exist any more."
Landfills are highly regulated and structured by the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation, she added.
Rain water must be collected into a detention pond to remove sediment before it's released into the Stones River. The leachate liquid that touches waste must go through a piping system to be processed through a membrane biological reactor pretreatment plant before it then goes through the city's treatment plant, Mulloy added.
"All of it gets monitored," Mulloy said. "You need to have landfills to manage the solid waste."
http://www.tennessean.com/article/D4/20100516/NEWS01/5160317/County+booms++landfill+looms
