Oakland County trash fight gets dirtier

SOCRRA towns – which are Berkley, Beverly Hills, Birmingham, Clawson, Ferndale, Hazel Park, Huntington Woods, Lathrup Village, Oak Park, Pleasant Ridge, Royal Oak and Troy.To block SOCRRA's move back into its backyard, Madison Heights officials burst into the site -- armed with a search warrant -- and then inspected the area, declared it unsafe and threw up barricades. Last week, SOCRRA sued to get back in. Next week, if SOCRRA loses in court, its arch foe will have delayed and possibly blocked indefinitely the authority's $12-million plan to make recycling easier for 700,000 people in Oakland County, General Manager Jeff McKeen said."Our goal is just to do a great job of handling solid waste for our members," McKeen said. The authority’s plan to expand was blessed months ago by the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, he said, adding: "We think we’re regulated by the state -- not by Madison Heights."Yet, if SOCRRA prevails in court, Madison Heights will have to tolerate six days a week of truck traffic all summer, bringing yard waste and construction debris to a spot bordered by homes, a school, a baseball field and a golf course, Mayor Brian Hartwell said. SOCRRA might not care about that, but it can't deny the city's ability to close off a dangerous site, Hartwell said."When our fire chief and building inspector went through there, they found over 50 clear violations of our building and fire codes. And we're not talking nickel-and-dime things like a cracked window or graffiti. Those are there. But we're talking about doors welded shut, large sections of masonry falling apart," Hartwell said.The city even wonders whether SOCRRA's giant smokestacks towering over an adjoining baseball field might collapse. So, after the inspections, the city closed the ball field closest to the stacks, officials said.NUSOCRRA's overall plan, one that state environmental honchos praise, is to upgrade the authority's main recycling facility in Troy so that it's a state-of-the-art,"single-stream" process, then spend nearly $5 million to buy 110,000 jumbo recycling carts for residents of its member cities. The hope is that people will double the amount they recycle because, with no need to sort paper from plastic, they'll just toss everything into the big new carts -- exceeding Gov. Rick Snyder's goal to push Michigan's recycling participation rate from its dismal 15% in 2014 to 30% this year, McKeen said.ENDNUDuring a four-to-six-month construction phase in Troy, SOCRRA hoped to temporarily reopen its facility in Madison Heights to handle part of its trash and recycling flow, he said.But whether SOCRRA's fresh trash incursion lasts weeks, months, or all year, Madison Heights officials are adamant about not allowing any fresh activity at the old site -- the subject of countless lawsuits, quarrels and pollution complaints between them and SOCRRA, formerly called the Southeastern Oakland County Resource Recovery Authority.SOCCRA's latest lawsuit against the city is "like 160 pages," said Madison Heights' environmental attorney Hugh Thomas. For 31 years, Thomas has made a career out of fighting the authority on behalf of Madison Heights City Hall. SOCRRA was founde... (Detroit Free Press)