LETTERS ABOUT RECYCLING

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Next BOCC meeting about contract

WASTE MANAGEMENT INC. CONTRACT
scheduled to be discussed by the BOCC March 12, 2002 in County Commissioners' Hearing Room in the county Courthouse.

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SAN JUAN COUNTY SOLID WASTE Schedule of Fees 2001

Don't sell valuable resource to lowest bidder

posted 02/26/02

Dear Editor:

The recent controversy regarding the county's desire to pay Waste Management Inc. to deal with our recyclables has finally created an opening for the light of truth to shine on why I no longer supervise the San Juan Island Transfer Station.

Bottom line first - I could not, in all good conscious, work as a public servant under management who thinks that the public has no right or need to know what it is doing. In April of 2001, I was placed under a virtual gag order not to disclose ANYTHING about the solid waste divisions plans or operations to anyone. YES! I have that on paper and anyone who is interested may view the signed letterhead upon which I eventually based my decision to resign from San Juan County as the San Juan Island Solid Waste Transfer Station &Recycling Center site Supervisor.

It breaks my heart that, after eight years of building, growing and nurturing the San Juan facility and our county's award winning recycling program, one or two individuals are willing to sell it to the lowest bidder.

Systematically, all the hard work and progress that everyone in Solid Waste put into achieving the excellence and quality of service we have been known for throughout the northwest has been whittled away to nothing in the name of saving a buck. Dedicated public servants have found that they are not valued or respected and have chosen to find alternatives to working under demeaning, degrading conditions. Programs have been cut or downsized including office paper and hazardous waste. As a result, more toxic chemicals have ended up in the waste stream and valuable goods have been reverted back to low grade waste paper.

Perhaps the most valuable commodity being thrown away and wasted by the current management is our county's human element of respect and responsibility. We are a people who care. We care about the beauty of the place we live. We care about the future. We care about each other. Yet, by accepting the current push to pay Waste Management Inc. to take our recyclables as well as our garbage, we are being forced to disregard our own responsibilities and take jobs away from our friends and neighbors so that a quick fix to an old problem (the solid waste debt) can be shown.

I am asking that anyone who gives a damn about the quality of life in these islands speak up and demand that we retain our integrity, respect and responsibility. Don't let the "easy" solution to pass the buck sway you into allowing all our valuable resources, both human and recyclable, to be sold to the lowest bidder.

Remember "All that must occur for evil to triumph is for the good people to stand by and do nothing."

Julie Laidlaw

Consider San Juan Sanitation or Miller's plan

Dear Editor:

The County Commissioner's proposed contract with Waste Management Inc. is a bad idea in every way but two: it gets our garbage off the island and it's cheap. Apparently, for the majority of our Commissioners, that’s enough.

Although I believe we should deal with our trash and recycling locally instead of trucking it to the mainland, my concern here is getting our islands more deeply involved with Waste Managment Inc. Waste Management tendered the lowest bid ($45 a ton) to haul our waste and recyclables off island, against competing bids by San Juan Sanitation ($70 a ton) and Rebanko ($100 a ton). Going with the low bidder, we are told, will help the County pay off the large debt accumulated under the current system. In theory this will allow the country to build a state-of-the-art trash and recycling facility.

The problem with Waste Management Inc. is that this corporation is, to say the least, environmentally irresponsible. Waste Management is one of our nation’s worst repeat environmental offenders, cited again and again for criminal violations of US law. Among its other bad habits, Waste Management Inc. has been documented taking a community’s carefully separated recyclables and simply dumping them as garbage. It has a passion for secrecy. It underbids the Mafia.

Moreover, Waste Management Inc. is a company in trouble. Forbes Magazine has named Waste Management as our nation's next potential Enron implosion. Like Enron, Waste Management has created thousands of questionable subsidiary corporations. Like Enron, Arthur Anderson audits Waste Management’s books. Like Enron, Anderson also provides Waste Management with financial consulting. Are we going to end up last in a long line of creditors to a bankrupt firm?

The County has hired a $300 an hour lawyer to look over the proposed Waste Management contract. District Attorney Randy Gaylord told the Commissioners at their February 12, 2002 meeting that these fees would quickly exhaust the County’s resources. I hope I misunderstood Mr. Gaylord when he apparently suggested these fees could become part of Waste Management’s administrative overhead. The attorney assuring us that everything is on the up and up with Waste Management will be paid by…Waste Management? That sounds like a conflict of interest in the making.

The proposed Waste Management Inc. contract will be reviewed at the March 12, 2002 Commissioner’s meeting. I suggest that either Commissioner Rhea Miller’s alternative to this plan be considered or that the San Juan Sanitation bid be reevaluated. Whatever aversion the County Commissioners have to SJS, it does not appear to have the massive financial, managerial and environmental liabilites of Waste Managment Inc. It is at least the devil we know.

Bryn Barnard

WMI contract a ridiculous request

To all residents of San Juan County,

Would every citizen of San Juan Co. please sign all the checks in your checkbook and mail them to us? We will tell you who we will give them to, and what amounts will be filled in on them when a large corporation with a history of convictions for customer abuse (and was named as an organized crime operation by the San Diego Prosecutors Office) lets us know how much they want.

Does this sound like a ridiculous request? Well this is exactly what your County Commissioners are asking you to do. They, along with Public Works Director Tom Huse and Solid Waste Manager John Shannon, have been negotiating with a waste handling company to take over handling recyclable materials produced in this county.

But when asked they have been unable or unwilling to answer questions such as:

• What is the length of the proposed contract?
  
  
• What are the mechanisms controlling cost increase?
  
  
• What controls and oversight will be in place to ensure compliance with this contract?
  
  
• What are the remedies available if we are dissatisfied and wish to terminate this contract?
  
  
• How much will it cost to rebuild our current facilities to change over to a completely different method of recycling?
  
  

If you feel you would like any of these questions answered before you sign all of those blank checks and mail them to Waste Management Inc. please write, call, or email: bocc@co.san-juan.wa.us or talk in person to Darcie Nielson, John Evans, and Rhea Miller and ask them why they have refused to hold public hearings prior to signing away our money.

Michael McBrayer

Irreversible consequences in proposed policy change

Dear Editor,

Many residents of San Juan County are disturbed and object to the methods employed by Tom Huse, Director of Public Works, and Jon Shannon, Solid Waste Manager. They intend to derail, rather than enhance, our County’s present recycling methods by entering into a new contract with Waste Management, Inc.

We find it difficult to comprehend why some are unaware of irreversible consequences which may result from a change in current County policy and operations.

Some facts:

1. At present island residents are knowledgeable and accustomed to separating recyclables which are subsequently sold by the County at prevailing market prices
   
   
2. Good environmental practices suggest that San Juan and Orcas could install bailers in order to compress and reduce the separated recyclable bulk. This would result in lower hauling costs to the mainland.
   
   
3. Lopez Island is a good example of a recycling center which can easily be duplicated on San Juan and Orcas.
   
   
4. Continual improvements of our recycling methods will result in becoming more efficient, self sustaining, and further reduce various cost factors
   
   
5. More local employment will result
   
   
6. Local waste haulers will be able to maintain their personnel and business rather than being in danger of going out of business or becoming sub-contractors of WMI

Waste Management, Inc. has an unenviable record in many jurisdictions across the country for illegal actions. Judgments have been awarded for anti-trust, toxic dumping, firing "whistle blowing" employees, misleading investors ($457 million fine in Connecticut) and numerous other illegal activities. Do we really want our County to deal with such an entity which coincidentally has the same auditing firm, Arthur Anderson, currently involved in the Enron escapades?

For those unfamiliar with the bids received for co-mingled recyclables:

Obviously there is a huge difference between the high and low bids. Why?

Why are there only three bids out of 14 potential bidders? Because our public works/waste managers changed county policy to haul only co-mingled recyclables thus eliminating bids from eleven small haulers.

It has come to our attention that there is a great deal of discontent among employees in our waste division. This is a result of direct coercion and implied threats to a number of workers. These employees were emphatically verbally instructed not to publicly discuss or criticize any matters or problems of which they were aware. Is this the action we expect in an open and free society?

Perhaps the Board should consider a more thorough examination of the Public Works/Waste administration’s professional and ethical management which reflects on the spirit of environmental and neighborly harmony which our citizens already possess and wish to maintain.

Dan Silkiss

San Juan Island resident opposes
contract with Waste Management

Dear Friends,

I am writing to express my total dismay that you are considering doing business with Waste Management Inc.

If you presented a plan for the county to sign a contract with Enron, everyone would jump all over you. In fact, you'd never do that. Yet you are now looking a signing a contract with a company that has just come through exactly the same mess as Enron, and, in November of last year, paid a huge fine to settle all the class actions suits that resulted.

Where will this company be looking to gain back all that money they had to pay out for their criminal behavior? To dopes like us willing to sign on and let bygones be bygones. Pleaeeeze, spare us this idiocy. Keep our recycling system here. Improve it, but don;t be dumb enough to give it away to these criminals.

Lee Sturdivant
Friday Harbor

Opposes outsiders taking over recycling

posted 10/16/01

Dear Editor,

I am opposed to the idea of having an outside firm take over the recycling for the county for several reasons. First, I'm sure that in the long run this will cost more and recycle less than we do now. Second, I'd like to move more towards things like The Exchange and Neil's Mall here on San Juan.

I'd also like to see the whole recycling program including steel pulled out from the enterprise system and take whatever measures necessary to continue to maximize the percentage of our waste that is recycled.

And contrary to the staement by John Evans, I don't think a taxing district for solid waste is such a bad idea. I'd also be willing to drop a buck or two into an honor box when I drop off my recycling to help defray costs. But I am strongly opposed to the idea that current intake needs to cover past debts or service the interest of such debts.

I'd also like to see some arrangement where trucks that are currently going back empty- like the lumber yards and such- could haul back the recycled bales from each island and get some cut for that or negotiate with the state for a recyclers' discount to cut down on costs.

Philosophically, I think we need to take care of our own garbage. and I'd like to see more recycling and not less.

Jan Osborn

Treasure our garbage

Dear Editor,

posted 09/08/01
No matter who we are, living in San Juan County means we all have two things in common: islands and garbage. If we treasure our islands, we should treasure our garbage.

Knowing intimately the amount of crap we contribute to the planet is a moral obligation these days. A worldly view, so to speak. Seems as though we should be encouraged by our county government to become more and more aware of our garbage, not less and less.

Rumor has it that a couple of county commissioners think we don't want to bother with our recycling, that we'd like someone to just pick it up curbside so we don't have to sort it out with our own two hands. Huh?

We live here for good reason. The least we can do is contribute to the solution rather than the problem by becoming more aware, not less, of the impact our consumption is having on this fragile earth, our island home.

So how about making the San Juan Island dump as nice as the one on Lopez? How about encouraging our good habits by putting recycling queen Julie Laidlaw in charge of garbage? How about nice tidy give-away stations so that our stuff can be recycled away from the dump as well as at it. How about latte stands for those of us who recycle for social reasons? How about re-cycling for singles on Saturday afternoon? How about a wake-up call to the public servants in this county who aren't aware of the their very earth-conscious constituents.

There are lots of bottom-lines to consider but when you get right down to it, growing awareness, not garbage, is what will eventually save us from our lesser selves.

Janet Thomas
San Juan Island