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“Outstanding service. They were extremely careful delivering the extra large container into our driveway.” -- A. L. GARNER
Two BBP staff members handle the controls, while a crew of volunteers doing court-ordered community service mans the hose as it slurps up refuse from the banks as well as bayou chokepoints where debris gathers naturally. But Robinson’s department also maintains an armory of jury-rigged solutions to go where the Bio-Vac can’t. After tearing through the off-the-shelf options, Robinson devised a handheld tool from shrimp-boat netting, chain-link fence, and a paint-roller extension pole that works great for skimming trash. And to get those pesky plastic bags tangled in trees lining the bayou? BBP created a six-pronged hook on a pole—like “something out of medieval times,” says Robinson—designed to stab, twist, grab, and pull your discarded Kroger bags from faraway limbs. Robinson says this is the most difficult part of the job, and he’s regularly caught flak about the bags’ “visual pollution” from BBP President Anne Olson—at least until recently. “She went out on the boat, and it took her like five minutes to get one bag out of a tree,” he says. “Now she knows.” “The trash is just unending,” Robinson laments. “Buffalo Bayou, White Oak Bayou, just between the two of them drain about 227 square miles of urban streets. Just one bottle, one cup from every other street that gets in the storm drain, it rains, and here it comes.” Which is why Robinson spent years working alongside grassroots activists fighting for a so-called Bottle Bill that would add a five-cent recycling bounty on the plastic bottles that make up most of what both his Bio-Vac sucks up and his nets scoop out. Currently, they grab what they can—“less than half,” he estimates—and even that ends up in a landfill; it would be too costly to sanitize and separate the waterlogged debris. The Bottle Bill died in the 2015 Texas Legislature, but Robinson still holds out hope for a future in which he can stop wrangling trash and just tend to the honeybees he keeps outside the field office. “Let’s just say I would love to be legislated out of a job,” he says. “It would absolutely make you sick to go out on this bayou sometimes and see what we’re doing.” ... (w Is Buffalo Bayou's Trash Picked Up?)
We do have some problems out there," said Pat Emory, director of the Delaware Natural Resources and Environmental Control's Office of Community Services. "On our highways it’s pretty evident what is going on." Most efforts to curtail littering and illegal dumping, which occurs when someone offloads large items like full trash bags or tires on public or private property, are usurped by a lack of staffing and the inherent difficulty of spotting the crime. Any law enforcement official in the state has the ability to enforce littering and dumping laws. The state takes what C.R. McLeod, the Delaware Department of Transportation director of community relations, describes as a multiagency approach to litter policing. But the reality is those officers are already overworked and have more pressing issues dealing with public safety to focus on. There is also how these violations are committed. Most times, it is merely people who quickly toss something out a car window while driving down the highway. The act is so brief that it's difficult to spot and even more difficult to track down violators. The DNREC Natural Resources Police Environmental Crimes Unit has 10 employees that respond to public reports and monitor surveillance footage, but they also take care of hazardous waste and chemicals, work with police on meth labs, and enforce solid waste, wastewater and wetland code violations, among other jobs. "Lots of times, it’s extremely difficult to catch people in the act of dumping," Emory said. Illegal dumping often occurs on hard-to-access back roads or is cloaked by darkness. Without video evidence, it's especially difficult to prove. In 2017, DNREC had 27 people arrested for illegal dumping, with fines totaling $13,500. Both were five-year highs. State police made 71 arrests for littering and illegal dumping in 2017 (25 in New Castle County, 14 in Kent County and 32 in Sussex County). Wilmington issued 1,795 such citations for the 12-month period of January 2017 through June 2018, according to Licenses and Inspections Commissioner Jeff Starkey. Fines totaled $89,750. Over the past year to date, Newark issued 14 littering citations. A... (spite fines for littering, illegal dumping, trash piles up in some parts of Delaware)
Bill de Blasio (D) is expected to sign the bill, which he endorsed last August. The bill was first proposed more than 10 years ago. A coalition of community and environmental advocates sought its passage, as well as Joint Council 16 of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, which has been fighting the growth of non-union labor in the commercial trash carting industry. Litigation Ahead? But National Waste & Recycling Association members are weighing a legal challenge, Steve Changaris, the association’s New York Chapter manager, told Bloomberg Environment. They are focusing in particular on the council’s environmental assessment, a “negative declaration” stating that no full-blown environmental impact statement would be required for the bill, he said. “We’re concerned whether it met the standards for a negative declaration,” said Changaris, whose group testified against the bill in hearings. The association believes that the law will increase costs and reduce jobs. Its stance should be evaluated as part of the social, economic, and transportation effects that would have to be weighed in a full environmental impact statement, he said. The Teamsters Union council, however, sees the bill as cutting truck traffic in overburdened neighborhoods and fostering “better wages and conditions for workers in the carting industry,” spokesman Alex Moore told Bloomberg Environment. While the union is concerned about jobs, “environmental justice is important to us as a policy goal,” he said. Backers of the bill cast it as a prelude to city plans to introduce a zoned carting system to reduce truck traffic and increase oversight of the commercial trash carting industry. Eddie Bautista, executive director of the New York City Environmental Justice Alliance, c... (ash Depots in Low-Income Sections Capped In New York City Bill)
Tuesday a bill in support of a plan to build a compost and recycling center in North Nashville got withdrawn by its sponsor following community opposition.But its creator wants to clear up what she believes are misconceptions.Nearly a third of landfill volume is food waste, Miel owner Seema Prasad says she knows this all too well.That’s why she came up with the idea to build an Anaerobic Digester to compost and recycle it along the 4700 block of Ashland City Highway in North Nashville.“They are going to see something that looks like an agricultural center, like a garden center,” Prasad said. “Up front there will he greenhouses and gardens, the digester is housed in a building, completely enclosed that looks like a garden or equestrian center.”Prasad says her plan would help the city get closer to its 30 year goal of zero waste to landfills at no cost to taxpayers.She plans to raise the money for the $14 million project on her own and with state environmental grants.“To create advanced recycling infrastructure like this dry digester, our community can greatly benefit by diverting those food scraps to the processing facility that allows them to be rapidly converted into compost and back into our farms," Pasad said.While admitting this plan is smart and sustainable, not everyone is on board with it.Neighbor... (ntroversial compost proposal still hopes to help Nashville's trash problem)
District agree."It's dumpsters and dumpsters and dumpsters full of trash," says resident Ian Hayes, whose home sits on the river.Frustrated community members have been making calls to village officials, and they're working with the Little River Conservancy to plan a meeting on the issue, though no date has been set. Randy Smith, a spokesperson for the water management district, says the area has long been a problem because people keep dumping trash into the river despite educational campaigns and the threat of fines. The problem has worsened lately because of heavy rains, which have caused faster-moving water that picks up debris and pushes it against the dam, and strong winds, which have blown more garbage into the river."This area, quite frankly, is always problematic for us because it's a very heavily urban area," Smith says. "We end up cleaning this area out more frequently than any of the others simply because of the amount of debris that's thrown into the water." But Hayes says the cleanups, which Smith says happen about twice a year, clearly aren't cutting it. By the time a water management barge comes through to clear the debris, it's built up to obscene levels. The muck floats along the river in giant clumps. Lately, it's been accompanied by a smell Hayes calls horrendous — "like a sewage truck overturned in your driveway." Residents worry about how the garbage might impact the wildlife the village prides itself on, from manatees to birds to turtles. "The wildlife aspect of it is definitely disheartening," Hayes says. "Especially when you see turtles floating down the river in piles of trash and birds walking on trash in the middle of the river."This week, the water management district has had two of its boats on the river to ... (ant Piles of Floating Trash Are Clogging Little River in El Portal)
