Some at the final North Sumter Community Utility Dependent District Waste workshop stated that recycling is not easy. While watching the U.S. return to launching our spacecraft to orbit, the words of President Kennedy echoed in my mind. “We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills.”
The option of burning all trash at the Covanta waste to energy plant is easy but doesn’t fit my view of a good recycling program nor lower costs.
I was told that a new waste management plan was needed to improve recycling and reduce expected cost increases.
Well, the Covanta-only option is the most costly and will help to increase NSCUDDs total rate increases to almost 24 percent over a one year time from ($17.90 to $22.24) excluding our new 2.5 percent yearly increase and the likely new charge for bulk white goods pickup.
While burning trash does reduce the volume of waste by some 90 percent to a pile of ash, the recyclable materials collected is minimal. For me, burning recyclable material is not recycling. Plus, no one will think about recycling as we did when placing items in a recycling bin every day for a weekly pickup. Instead, we will have a situation where recycling is kind of out of sight out of mind. We now burn everything which is better recycling?
I would note that Villagers living south of State Road 44 can’t complain to the Developer that we have a recycling program and they don’t as all Villagers will soon have the same program of taking all trash to Covanta for burning. However, those under the NSCUDD trash program will pay about 10 percent more in monthly trash fees than Villagers south of 44 on a private system.
I suspected that a waste to energy option might be in the works as the NSCUDD board visited the Pasco Covanta waste to energy plant last summer. I thought the Covanta spokesperson explained that waste to energy facilities in the U.S. were having a difficult time making a profit. There has been a reduction of waste to energy plants in the U.S. from 87 10 years ago to 73 today.
Never the less, several other board members were excited that NSCUDD might even build a new waste to energy plant to be used by Villagers until staff nixed those thoughts as being way too expensive.
If the intent of this waste management plan study was to have NSCUDD provide the same service as found in the Villages south of State Road 44, OK but don’t do it under the guise of improving recycling and reducing costs because that isn’t happening.
I am disappointed to see recycling disappear and the selection of the highest cost trash option which will add about $1.5 million of additional yearly costs based on estimated budget numbers. Yet, I understand many see and hear things differently like watching commentators on CNN rather than FOX news or vice versa.
I would add that facts are sometimes hard to picture and my failure to ask enough questions didn’t help.
I wish a representative from Covanta and Waste Management had been in attendance at any of the NSCUDD workshops to clarify more of the positives and negatives representing their specific options.
As the Covanta only option will be passed at the NSCUDD meeting on June 18, I probably won’t vote in protest as I can ask more questions specifically on the perceived benefits of burning recyclable materials of the Covanta rep that will finally be in attendance at this meeting. I always try to keep an open mind except on rising cost figures which I detest.
Richard Rademacher serves on the North Sumter Community Utility Dependent District.
