LETTERS ABOUT SAN JUAN ISLAND SOLID WASTE

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Free recycling likely to end

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Letters regarding end to free recycling

Dear Editor,

posted 10/31/03
In regards to one proposal by the BOCC to start charging for recycling, I have to wonder what were they thinking??? This proposal is about as short-sighted as I've ever heard. I've suggested it before, and I'll say it again--our BOCC need to get into a car and take a drive to Eugene, Oregon and take a look at a county dump that is a model dump (if there's such a designation) that has garnered world attention.

Representatives from all over the world have gone to Eugene to visit the dump and see how they've managed to make money and still encourage recycling. When you go to this dump, you HAVE to go through the recycling area to get to the dump. If you recycle, you are given a red card to present to the weighmaster at the dump. When you give this card, you actually get $1.50 taken OFF your bill. Not ADDED on as suggested by on of our commissioners. Sure, it's extra work to recycle there, as you have to separate everything (brown glass from clear, newspaper from glossy stock, various numbered plastics, etc.) But the effort is worth the trouble.

I don't have the eloquence to say this any other way--"charging for recycling is not only short-sighted...It's just plain stupid." At a time when we should be doing everything we can to help our environment, the BOCC suggests an idea that will discourgage recycling, forcing more renewable resources INTO the dump, not out of it.

Come on BOCC. Get more creative. Find a way to make recycling work, without charging or eliminating it.

John Boyd

Dear Editor,

posted 10/31/03
If the county begins charging for recycling, individuals and businesses will stop making the trip. Even though we compost as much as possible, the amount of plastic, aluminum cans, and boxes that we accumulate from our business fills a pickup truck weekly in the summer and bi weekly in the winter, all recycled material.

Even though it is an inconvenience to pack the truck and drive it up to Sutton Road, the current cost benefit to our business is worth our extra effort. If we are required to pay a fee for all this effort, I imagine the cost benefit is elminated. We may as well stack it up for pick up and save us hours of time and gasoline to make the trip to Sutton Road.

Multiply that by many businesses, and plan on adding additional garbage crews. I trust the county will look at the big picture. Right now, the county has many "free" employees bringing their recycling to the recycle center. Start charging for recycling, and you will see a dramatic decline in those willing to use their time and gasoline, get dirty and get stung by summer bees.

Imagine if recycling is reduced even by 50% and left for the garbage crews to now provide the trucks and manpower to pick up this additional tonnage currently being brought to the recycle center. Just factor that into equation and see if charging for recycling makes economic sense.

Jim Carroll

Dear Editor,

posted 10/30/03
It is unfortunate to hear that this discussion is going on. It may not be environmentally correct for me to say so, but I imagine that if I am charged for recycling, I'll no longer recycle. It's much easier to throw it in the can with the rest of the trash and let the hauling service that I already pay for take it away. There's enough debate over the actual benefits of recycling to soothe my conscience about doing so.

The choice to recycle requires that an individual dedicate space in their home for collection of such items and then make a deliberate and out-of-the-way trip to the transfer station to unload their recyclables. If you then penalize people for doing so, you may find far fewer people who are willing to expend the effort. Or maybe you'll just find one--me.

Tim Daniels

Dear Editor,

posted 10/30/03
I'm with Ms. Miller. Let's establish a solid waste taxing district. Whatever we do, do not discourage recycling!

David T. Hoopes, Ph.D.

Letters regarding tax to finance solid waste capital needs

Dear Editor,

posted 10/08/03
I use the recycling facility almost exclusively and am constantly aware of the good deal we have for free. I enjoy recycling and don't enjoy putting usable stuff into the garbage area. I would be happy to pay an additional property tax but suggest there be a way to proportion the fee between recycle and garbage. Good idea for a contest.

Elaine Fleming

Dear Editor,

posted 10/08/03
How about using the gravel pit!

Save the cost of hauling garbage off island. When it all decomposes you can plant grass that will be lush and green for parks and playing fields! There is no soil there anyway. Make some good compost out of all that garbage. Lots of islanders do that now, why not the County?

Helen Chapman King

Letters regarding San Juan Island Transfer Station

Dear Editor,

posted 10/01/03
I would like to explain more fully to the community why I chose to appeal the Conditional Use Permit for the County to go ahead with their new solid waste facility and grant-funded Trash to Treasures project on Sutton Road. This online paper cited part of my statement of "standing", a required part of the appeal, telling basically why I care. They quoted only the first part of my statement of how the projects affects me, but dropped off the second half which says "I believe that this project threatens to pollute a very large wetland near my property that is connected to a shoreline that supports a continuous and healthy eelgrass bed, via a stream in which citizens frequently raise salmon eggs, and that insufficient controls are in place to know about or to prevent that from happening. I also believe that this project opens the possibility of contamination of groundwater or of changes in deep water well recharge that may affect my own wells and the wells of my neighbors. It will also remove vegetation currently shielding my neighborhood from industrial activities at the "old" dump site and which also act as a no-cost biofilter for uncapped garbage on that site near my home."

In my view, the problems with this project go far beyond the unfortunate visual effects near my home. I was encouraged by a radio program that played while I was working on my appeal, in which the general and ongoing degradation of Puget Sound waters was being discussed. The Technical/Science Program Manager for the Puget Sound Action Team commented that most people think only about their own properties, but that "we need them to think bigger." If San Juan County isn't going to think beyond their own property boundaries on a new Solid Waste Facility supported by a large grant of federal money, who is? Many of the issues that drove my appeal are environmental and point out that the county did not consider any environmental effects off the boundaries of the parcel that they created specifically to site this project.

I appealed the project on nine grounds. I will simplify the issues here to get some of the basic ideas across without the gory details.

The application on which the permits rely has never been complete. It lacks several of the features required by (San Juan County) law, including water and fire protection. In fact selection of this site included the assumption that (town) water was available, which has proved not to be true. None of the rest of us is allowed to proceed until our application is complete. My conversation with the BOCC on this point began during Citizen's Access Time on July 8, 2003, when I asked how they could go ahead and issue a Determination of Nonsignificance to this project, since the application was incomplete. I was told that they were discussing it - they issued the DNS on July 15 to the incomplete application. If the county loses their grant for this project, another interpretation might be because they thought that they were above their own rules and didn't bother to complete their application before permitting the project.

A lot of the importance of the Hearing Examiner's decision in this case rests on the siting of an "essential public facility" on land otherwise not zoned for this use. The implications will reach out into the barge landing site process throughout the county. In my appeal, I went through the very precise UDC (county law) definitions of "essential public facility", "solid waste transfer station" and "recycling center". It seems pretty clear to me that the Trash to Treasures project with its Builders Exchange and Thrift Store, does not qualify as an essential public facility and therefore should not be placed at the Sutton Road site. As far as I can tell, the Solid Waster Advisory Committee has always considered the solid waste transfer station to be an appropriate site for this Builders Exchange, but features of the project that seem by the UDC "Definitions" to be specifically forbidden on this site which was converted from Agricultural Resource Land include retail sales and services, warehouse facilities, unnamed commercial uses, fuel storage facilities, construction yards, heavy and light industrial uses, outdoor storage yard, salvage yard, and unnamed industrial uses. The BOCC Resolution in April 2003 that selected the Sundstrom Parcel designated "that location as an essential public facility for solid waste collection and transfer on San Juan Island." Not for a builders exchange (Trash to Treasures project).

As I stated above, the Trash to Treasures application is incomplete in that it lacks water, fire protection, sewer, and adequate drainage to meet State requirements. I am not quite sure how I realized at 3 am one night while writing this appeal, that the old Browne Lumber site in fact has everything that the project needs, including these critical features. Yes, I have appealed the process, possibly costing the county their $423,000 Trash to Treasures grant, but I have also suggested a solution that has many features that the Sundstrom site lacks, including all utilities, no new environmental damage, and being legal. There is still time to work on an "old Browne Lumber site" solution and keep the grant.

Finally, I appealed on a number of environmental grounds. This parcel is probably the only one in the state bridging a retired landfill and an enormous wetland that runs very shortly into marine waters. In not thinking beyond the boundaries of the project, the county accurately checked a box on the application that there were no wetlands on this property. They then failed ever again to address possible wetland-related issues including pollution. The drainage plan submitted in support of the application, which will protect (or not) this wetland, quite frankly states: "The stormwater treatment and runoff control facilities have been sized to accommodate only the Phase I development. Additional stormwater treatment and runoff control facilities or an expansion of the Phase I facilities will be required for Phase 2." Yet the permit was issued for both Phase I and Phase 2. The Hearing Examiner's decision in fact does state that "The storm drainage for the project shall comply with the DOE Stormwater Drainage Manual." It is my understanding from reading all materials submitted with the application that this "Conclusion" has not been met (the designing engineer did not return my phone call), and thus it may be inadequate drainage on an unsuitable site, and not my appeal, that loses the county its grant. I appealed the fact that Public Works is now allowed to police themselves on whether or not the drainage plan is adequate, since their original submission seems disingenuous.

Neighborhood negotiations and information meetings about this project have been conducted nearly exclusively with people living on the Hillview Terrace side of the parcel, which is the most affected by the present solid waste and recycling facility location, and not with the homeowners who will drive daily in and out Sutton Road experiencing the new industrial view on a parcel not large enough to provide full natural screening. As it turns out, Hillview Terrace residents use Town water, but all homes off Sutton Road use wells, most of which are located within about 1000 feet of the Sundstrom Parcel. The county (and the Hearing Examiner) have chosen not to consider possible issues of deepwater well recharge or groundwater contamination that might result from changes of runoff patterns caused by four more acres of impervious surface in the neighborhood. The Geotechnical Engineering Report submitted in support of the Trash to Treasures Project specifically states at the end: "The scope of our services for this report did not include any environmental assessment or evaluation regarding the presence or absence of wetlands or hazardous toxic materials in the soil, surface water, groundwater, or air, on or below or around the site." It seems that the engineers, if not the county, realized the shortcomings of their study.

Claudia Mills

Dear Editor,

posted 07/21/03
Two weeks ago I went to the Permit Department and came home shocked and disappointed in the county plans for the new San Juan Island garbage and recycling site, adjacent to the present one off Sutton Road. While ostensibly building a model "Trash to Treasures" facility that will be state-of-the-art in terms of reuse, recycling and whatever "sustainability" is, the county is proposing to clear 45-55% (undoubtedly closer to 55% when the dust clears) of a small, mostly forested parcel that is presently zoned agricultural/rural and cover it with impermeable surface in the form of roads, buildings, parking, turn-arounds and storage spaces.

I am all for recycling trash as well as unused construction materials and yes, we need a better laid out garbage facility on San Juan Island, with a driving pattern that works well for its customers. But I say no to clearing a new space exactly beside the old dump, starting all over again only a few feet away. We already have a heavily impacted, industrialized site dedicated to waste management, and with little additional destruction of the natural landscape, and a lot of cooperation between our friends in authority at both the town and county levels, a better plan could be masterminded in the old space, using perhaps a little of the new parcel to make it really good, while at the same time well-screened from view.

There is a lot of talk in the air these days about sustainability and low-impact development. It was such ideas that got the county their grant for this so-called model facility in the first place. This is not a low-impact project -- please begin the recycling aspect of this project at its core and recycle the old dump site into a new and better one.

The county is operating under a Dec. 2003 deadline to use the $500,000 grant for their Trash to Treasures project. However, the project now on paper is likely to cost twice, if not three times, the amount of the money available for it. So far no one is talking about how much extra money will be needed or where it will come from, yet the deadline looms.

And finally, use of the 6+-acre agricultural/rural parcel along Sutton Road for the new facility will cause the county to make its first zoning condemnation for an "essential service", of a parcel whose fate would have seemed already sealed by the past 10 years of endlessly-debated community-endorsed GMA planning. Handling of garbage is certainly an essential service, but putting a bigger better new site next to, but not using, the old site because the county and city can't get along is not what I would have hoped for the wave of the future.

Although the application for Determination of Nonsignificance was not complete as of July 14, the comment period has been advertised to end July 15 and a public hearing is tentatively scheduled for August 15. In moving rapidly to meet these deadlines, one day before scheduled closure of the comment period the application still lacked the necessary plans for water, fire protection, sewage and gray-water treatment.

I hope that the paper will run an article including the full plans in time for the public to get informed. Once the clearing, cutting ,and filling begins it will be too late - the county is embarking on a "paved paradise, put up a parking lot" venture that is unnecessarily redundant, and distinctly not in the vein of sustainable reuse of resources (land) under which it is touting the project.

Claudia Mills
San Juan Island

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