PD DEBATE: Fix the landfill and become nationals leaders in recycling and reuse

<p>Sonoma County must fix the environmental problems of its existing landfill and lead the way in innovative waste disposal and reuse.</p><p>Recycling and composting, reducing inputs, methane gas capture and use and windmill electric generation are the areas where more focus is required.</p><p>It is unconscionable for any area to visit its garbage upon others. This is a welcome opportunity to expand originality and local responsibility.</p><p>At a time when the awareness of environmental accountability has risen to the front of our consciousness, at a time when we are seeing and feeling the negative effects of lack of regulation and privatization, the question should be moot.</p><p>Those who create trash are responsible for it. Michael Allen, state Sen. Pat Wiggins’s district representative, was quoted in the March 31 Press Democrat as saying, “When you take something from the public sector and move it over to the private, it can create disaster.” The disaster of oversight neglect and deregulation can be seen daily in our newspapers and television news. It carries a take-away lesson for our times.</p><p>Do we want to continue to shunt responsibility to others or do we want to be the inventive leaders of a new economy?</p><p>While current recycling markets have stagnated, perhaps because of reliance on the export of valuable materials, perhaps because of the global economic downturn, there is opportunity to create jobs by repurposing our own waste materials.</p><p>A 90 percent recycling/composting rate could be attained. Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas. The landfill currently generates six megawatts of electricity (equal to the energy needs of approximately 6,000 households) from its methane gas power plant and could produce more by expanding the plant. Thus far, the cost to upgrade and extend the plant has been considered prohibitive; however, when environmental consequences are factored into the equation, the price of inaction is higher.</p><p>Trucking waste to other landfills is only a temporary solution to our ongoing consumptive habits. Reducing, reusing (repurposing) and recycling must focus more on the reduction of consumption and built-in obsolescence and in recapturing the important materials that flow into the waste stream. Let’s be the leaders into a green economy.</p><p>Ann Carranza is a writer from Healdsburg.</p>