A front-end loader dumps trash into a waiting trailer in the load-out tunnel beneath the transfer station the city of Greensboro owns on Burnt Poplar Road. The trailer will be hauled 62 miles by a driver employed by Hilco transport and emptied at a private landfill operated by Republic Services in Montgomery County. (photo by Jordan Green)
Jeryl Covington, a woman of impeccable habits of dress, a mind that churns over technical details with vise-like precision and expertise on all things related to trash, watched a driver for Hilco Transport turn his rig into the parking lot in front of Greensboro’s waste transfer station.
The trailers were lined evenly in place, some empty with tarps rolled back indicating they were ready to be pulled into the load-out tunnels to receive their cargo, some full and ready to be hitched up for the 62-mile journey to Republic Services’ Uwharrie Environmental Landfill in Montgomery County.
Covington, who heads the city’s environmental services department, eyed a slot between two trailers and judged it too narrow, but the driver surprised her.
“Oh, he’s going to do it,” she gasped. The cab swung in a wide arc on its passenger side, straightened out at what seemed to be the last possible moment and pulled the long trailer through the strait, hardly braking until the rig came to a stop.
About a thousand tons of garbage flows through the transfer station a day, according to a state solid waste audit completed last year. There it’s weighed, dumped on a vast concrete floor, mixed to achieve optimal density, tamped down and scraped into a funnel that leads down to a waiting trailer in the load-out tunnels beneath the cavernous structure.
The giant mounds of garbage on the floor combined hauls from the city’s fleet of residential and commercial collector trucks, along with private haulers that pay the city’s $41 tipping fee for the privilege of unloading their bounty. The trash and the solid waste market are already richly commingled by the time it hits the floor: Many national property management companies opt to have apartment complex garbage picked up by private companies instead of paying the city for its collection service.
Garbage is a cost for anyone who produces it. In the early 1990s, the state of North Carolina embarked on a goal of reducing the amount of waste produced per person by 40 percent. The effort failed miserably. Spurred by a super-heated economy that drove the population from 6.8 million to 8.1 million, homebuilding and other types of construction exploded while individual wastefulness ramped up by 16.5 percent. By the peak year of 2007 the state as a whole was producing 11.8 million tons of waste, but because of dampened consumerism during the economic downturn, the amount is expected to return to 2001 levels this year, at about 10 million tons.
And as anyone who has considered Tony Soprano’s line of work knows, garbage is a source of revenue for those who offer the service of collecting, transporting and disposing it. The White Street Landfill is both an asset and a liability depending on whether your objective is to bury waste or build homes and businesses with healthy tax value in the immediate vicinity of its gaping maw, its odors and activity of rumbling trucks. Earlier in this decade, the city not only buried its own household waste at the White Street Landfill, but collected fees from Republic Services and other private companies for the privilege of dumping municipal solid waste there. In 2006, that arrangement was effectively reversed when the city closed the White Street Landfill to most municipal solid waste and contracted with Republic Services to dispose of its garbage at the Uwharrie landfill in Montgomery County.
But the city still keeps its toe dipped in the waters of waste disposal. From July 2008 through June 2009, the White Street Landfill buried 7,766 tons of what people in the business like to call “screening”: the odd engagement ring flushed down the toilet in a moment of anger or, more typically, condoms and tampons that have been screened out of the city’s wastewater. This material is so disgusting, Covington has said, that it needs to be buried right away, and it can’t hit the tipping floor at the transfer station and make the overland journey down to Montgomery County.
The White Street Landfill also buries construction and debris — about 72,000 tons of it per year. Covington told at-large Councilman Robbie Perkins in a set of written responses in late October that construction and demolition debris dis posal generated $2.9 million for the city in the most recent fiscal year.
For residents living in the area of the White Street Landfill who threatened to sue the city for discrimination and who have long contended that they suffer from inordinate rates of cancer and asthma, that might not exactly be the clean sweep they had expected. But the city has held on to a part of its waste disposal business to remain a player in the market. Unused capacity gives the city leverage to negotiate reasonable tipping fees from Republic Services and avoid passing along higher costs to residents.
The city finally stopped accepting most municipal solid waste at the White Street Landfill and started shipping it down to Montgomery County in 2006. That prompted a political backlash that eventually eroded a consensus built around the idea of developing northeast Greensboro and allowed candidates who placed more emphasis on reducing the cost of government to build a majority over the next two elections.
That priority was voiced by Bill Knight during an interview with WFMY News 2 on the morning after he was sworn in as the city’s new mayor.
“We want to get into the facts,” he said. “There’s been a lot of talk, a lot of hype, a lot of press. The four newcomers had one orientation. We will want to see a full presentation by the manager and his staff of all the information. You can only make good decisions with good information. We want to do what’s best for Greensboro, what is cost efficient and what meets Greensboro’s needs.”
During the campaign Knight told News & Record Editorial Page Editor Allen Johnson that the city “wastes millions of dollars” transporting its waste to Montgomery County and that the cost difference is “staggering.”
Before the new council was sworn in, at-large Councilman Robbie Perkins downplayed a raging debate about the possible health risks of the White Street Landfill and the nearby EH Glass dumpsite. State health officials had found a higher than expected rate of pancreatic cancer in the area but cau tioned against drawing the conclusion that there was a causal relationship.
“The reason we’re here is to save money,” Perkins said. “We’re not really here to evaluate the health risk…. How much money is it going to take to cause us to reopen the landfill? When someone tells me a number then I can make a decision.”
Maurice Warren II is vice-chair of the Woodhill Park Association and Democratic chair of his voting precinct.
Warren said he and his neighbors would like to know about any toxins that they might have been exposed to as a result of waste disposal activities in the area.
“Any information as far as swaying opinion to reopen the landfill — no,” he said. “We don’t want it reopened. I did two tours in Vietnam. I’ve got to fight it. I gave my time for my country, and now I’m going to give my time to my community.”
The sense that the city is losing money by not fully exploiting the White Street Landfill and that something different must be done with Greensboro’s solid waste has whetted appetites for profit in the private sector. At least three private groups have expressed interest in contracting with the city, including industry heavyweight Republic, a former city councilman and a little known company promising to use cuttingedge technology.
The cost difference between continuing to send Greensboro’s trash to Montgomery County and diverting it back to the White Street Landfill has become the most political of questions related to solid waste for the new council: The higher the estimated savings, the greater the case for bringing the waste back to White Street; the lower the figure, the greater the case for maintaining the status quo or finding some alternative that does not involve the White Street area.
The estimated cost savings has shown a wild swing from a low figure of $1.5 million per year to a high number of $15 million.
A two-page memo drafted by interim Assistant City Manager Andy Scott to address the question in June cautioned, “This is a very preliminary analysis. Because of the complexity of the issue I recommend that if council would like to fully discuss this alternative that we engage an experienced engineering firm to provide a fully detailed analysis.”
In fact, council has been discussing the matter in heated rhetorical skirmishes since early 2008, when then-Councilman Mike Barber proposed reopening the landfill. Covington said the last council never received a briefing from her on the topic, adding that it came up during budget planning, and two budget briefings were canceled. Covington held a briefing on solid waste for the four new council members on the night before they were sworn in. The session lasted less than two hours, and covered cost assumptions, market forces, technological considerations and alternatives in only the most cursory fashion. The new city council is also scrambling to get up to speed on a controversial financing arrangement for a planned aquatic center and trying to get its arms around a handful of lawsuits bedeviling the police department. As of Dec. 3, Covington said she did not know if and when they would call on her expertise.
Greensboro’s political class has been wrestling with the question since the city started sending its trash to Montgomery County.
“From an economic standpoint, it makes sense for them to use the White Street Landfill,” said political consultant Bill Burckley, who analyzed the cost savings in 2007 at the request of candidate and future Councilwoman Trudy Wade. Burckley provided consulting services in the recent city council election for eight out of nine victorious candidates, including the new mayor.
‘We’re not really here to evaluate the health risk…. How much money is it going to take to cause us to reopen the landfill?’ — Greensboro Councilman Robbie PerkinsSolid waste, by the numbers Distance Greensboro’s garbage travels from the city transfer station to the Uwharrie landfill in Montgomery County, in miles:
62 Amount in which garbage is valued per ton when it comes through the transfer station, in dollars:
41 Percent by which the state of North Carolina attempted to reduce personal waste production in the 1990:
40 Percent by which personal waste production increased during that time period: 16.5
Burckley said he estimated the cost savings at $10 million to $12 million per year based not only on the difference between tipping fees per ton of municipal solid waste collected by the city, but also by adding “opportunity costs” from revenue that could be generated by enticing private companies such as Republic to pay the city for the privilege of bringing waste back to White Street.
Since the city began exploring the option of diverting its waste from the White Street Landfill in 2001, Republic has built its own transfer station south of Greensboro. Then, almost exactly a year ago Republic completed a merger with Allied Waste. The new company now operates 219 landfills in 40 states, serving more than 13 million customers.
“I can’t say these private tons are going to come here because I’m not in the game anymore,” Covington said.
Burckley argued in response that considering Greensboro’s proximity to Republic’s Guilford County customer base, it only stands to reason that the private company would be able to cut costs by bringing waste to White Street.
The waste handled by the Greensboro transfer station that is collected by the city’s fleet of garbage trucks from residents — 62,000 out of 238,000 tons per year — is relatively modest. In contrast, Covington said, the city charged Republic for 80,000 tons per year that subsidized city-collected garbage disposal before it started sending its trash to Montgomery County and Republic made its own arrangements.
“The only waste that I own is the 62,000 tons that comes in from home collection,” Covington said. “The apartment complexes [with dumpsters] that are on our front-loader service can go with Republic.”
The 1.9 million cubic yards of capacity left in the permitted portion of the White Street Landfill wouldn’t provide enough volume to make it economically advantageous for Republic to pay the city’s tipping fees, Covington said.
Republic spokeswoman Peg Mulloy said she could not say whether the company would be likely to do business with another entity operating the White Street Landfill, but said Republic expects to have a representative at a city staff meeting this week to review a Request For
Proposals for privatized waste disposal. The Request For Proposals was issued at the request of a group led by Bob Mays, a member of the city’s redevelopment commission and a former city council member.
Covington’s cost analysis assumes a relevant waste stream of 62,000 tons per year, excluding the commercial waste picked up by the city, and arrives at a savings of $2 million to $2.5 million.
The city’s budget office arrived at an estimated cost savings of $2.4 million last spring by subtracting revenue reduction from expenditure reduction. The budget office’s estimate assumes the relevant waste stream at 120,000 tons, which combines residential and commerical trash picked up by field operations. This analysis assumes a cost of $36 per ton to process waste through the transfer station under the current situation and a tipping fee of $29 per ton charged for disposing it at the White Street Landfill under the new scenario.
There are potential savings to be realized by maximizing the productive efficiency of the White Street Landfill, considering that even with most of Greensboro’s waste going to Montgomery County the city still bears operational costs in closing existing sections of the landfill and monitoring the site. Also, the city is already paying staff to handle construction and demolition material and screening at White Street. The major savings would be realized by reducing operational expenditures at the transfer station, but personnel costs would remain the same there.
Covington and Perkins are quick to point out that the unlined Phase II, which receives construction and demolition, is operating without a permit. That means the state could shut it down at any time. In that event, the roughly 70,000 tons of construction and demolition — with its $2.9 million annual revenue stream — would be transferred to Phase III. That section is estimated to have about six more years of capacity left. To expand the landfill by opening a Phase IV, the city would have to buy land, conduct environmental studies, hold a public meeting, dig the hole and obtain an operating permit — a process Covington estimates would take a minimum of five years.
Perkins has also said that the city promised to build a road from Cone Boulevard to Nealtown Road to relieve truck traffic through residential areas on White Street. Transportation Director Adam Fischer said the road project, including a bridge across North Buffalo Creek, is budgeted at $9.1 million and is anticipated to start late next year or in early 2011.
Considering the range of estimated cost savings attached to the city’s diversion of its trash to Montgomery County, the burden to taxpayers could be considered roughly equivalent to the $1.8 million spent to plug the Greensboro Coliseum Complex’s annual operating deficit.
Members of council and staff have wrangled over lesser amounts.
In December 2007, staff scrounged up $500,000 at council’s request to fund the police department’s robbery suppression squad by implementing a hiring freeze across all departments. More recently, the city plugged a $7.5 million budget gap last year, in part, by delaying scheduled vehicle purchases. By the lowest estimated cost savings of redirecting waste to the White Street Landfill, the city could have easily restored cuts to allow the library’s mobile unit to make visits to daycares, and put funds back into street maintenance, right-of-way maintenance and snow plowing.
Some current and recent costs faced by the city include $6.9 million to close a financing gap for the aquatic center; $6.2 million for the Greensboro Sportsplex; $6.1 million for the Battleground Rail Trail project; $4.6 million for the South Elm- Eugene Fire Station, sched uled to be built next year; $3.5 million for the McGirt-Horton Library; $2.9 million for the new Carolyn Allen Community Park; $1.3 million for one hybrid electric transit bus and 11 small buses; and $1.1 million for the delayed Florida Street Connector.
Yet reversing the city council’s 2001 decision and expanding the White Street Landfill carries a notable opportunity cost, along with its immediate savings: stunted residential and commercial development, along with depressed property values and correspondingly low tax revenue in the city’s northeast quadrant.
The map of northeast Greensboro looks like the thumb side of a mitten, with White Street Landfill sitting in the crook between a thumb of development spreading east along East Wendover Avenue and a forefinger running northby-northeast with US Highway 29.
Boosters of northeast Greensboro like to say that the area is ripe for economic development considering the future construction of the final phase of the urban loop and the fact that the city is boxed in by other municipalities in virtually every other direction.
“There’s no progressive urbanized community in North Carolina that’s going to expand a landfill that sits in their community,” said former Mayor Keith Holliday, who led the council that closed the landfill in 2001. “You stifle all the development and economic impact of northeastern Greensboro.”
The siting of the transfer station off of Interstate 40 near the western portion of the urban loop and next to a major railway made sense both because it could quickly direct trash cargoes onto major transportation corridors, but also because it was near an epicenter of the decadeplus construction boom that wound down last year. Northwest Greensboro has benefited from the highest level of economic activity in the city, and has accordingly produced the highest share of waste.
“That was the impetus behind building the transfer station: to not always be sending garbage to Montgomery County, but to someday be able to route it to a regional landfill,” Holliday said.
“We should take the Randleman Lake model, and apply it to a regional solution for a Triad landfill to take care of our waste probably for the next hundred years,” he added.
The competing pressures to reduce government spending, keep new solid waste out of the White Street Landfill and put people to work have driven a search for alternatives.
Landfills remain the most costefficient approach, considering that land remains relatively cheap in the upper Piedmont region of North Carolina and real estate doesn’t command the kind of premium prices that justify high tax rates which could pay for expensive waste disposal technologies such as plasma gasification, waste-to-energy incineration plants and bio-conversion operations, Covington said.
“That will change if we become highly urbanized,” she said. “Or if we become beachfront. Or if we become recreational, like Florida.”
St. Lucie County, on the Atlantic coast of Florida, is slated to become the first local government to operate a plasma gasification plant in the United States, when it starts accepting waste in 2011. It also has little land available for burying trash because of a shallow groundwater table. Covington said St. Lucie County’s waste disposal costs, when calculated by ton, are significantly higher than Greensboro’s.
In general, the private groups that have approached Greensboro’s environmental services director about pursuing alternative approaches to handling the city’s solid waste have struck her as unprepared.
“Some of the fly-by-night companies that come in and talk to me don’t even know what their regulatory agency is,” Covington said. “If you don’t even know what permits you need, you don’t have any business talking to me. I’m like, ‘You’ve never heard of DENR? The name Paul Crissman [the state solid waste section chief] doesn’t mean anything to you?’ Let me tell you: You want DENR to be your best friend.”
Waste reduction is one way to extend the life of landfills, whether in Greensboro or elsewhere. And Greensboro holds some bragging rights in that department. Among urbanized North Carolina counties, Guilford County produces 1.4 tons of garbage per person. Neighboring Forsyth County generates 1.5 tons. Mecklenburg County tops the list as the most wasteful urbanized county with 1.7 tons, while Durham County sets the bar for thrift at 1.2 tons.
“I would say one of the reasons why Guilford might be lower is because they have a high-performing recycling program in Greensboro,” state recycling director Scott Mouw said. “[Greensboro] has a very aggressive and comprehensive commercial recycling program. An example of that is that by state law bars and restaurants have to recycle beverage containers. Most cities just let bars and restaurants deal with it on their own by contracting with private collectors.
The competing pressures to reduce government spending, keep new solid waste out of the White Street Landfill and put people to work have driven a search for alternatives.Greensboro is one of the few cities that have said they were going to do it.”
Greensboro could also reduce its waste stream by instituting mandatory composting, like San Francisco. Yet there’s still a cost attached to paying someone else to handle your refuse. San Francisco transports its compost to a commercial facility 70 miles outside of the city. The revenue from selling compost to organic farmers essentially covers the cost of transporting it and processing it, city spokesman Mark Westlund said.
“We’ve always wanted to put our refuse to the highest use,” he said. “We want to reduce as much as possible. The city has set goals of 75 percent diversion by 2010 and zero waste by 2020.”
Greensboro’s quest for cost savings has caused the city to explore the possibility of privatization. Ironically, some fear that course could lead to the exact opposite outcome.
“Our best position is to try to keep the city of Greensboro in the garbage game so that we can keep the longer-term rates reasonable for the people of Greensboro,” Perkins said. “We could privatize the whole thing, and 10 years down the road people could be paying three times as much for garbage disposal.”
Perkins said if the council ends up approving a contract as a result of the current Request For Proposals it will have made “a horrendous mistake.”
