Nothing to like about landfills
By Michael Farrell
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mfarrell@morrisdailyherald.com
It would be great if there was a solution to our garbage problem.
The fact we throw away too much and reuse or recycle too little is only part of the problem.
Recycling, while better in most cases than throwing something away, is not always environmentally pristine. The breaking down of computers and other electronic equipment in Asia and Africa is shortening lives and creating huge environmental problems.
There are always some things that have to be thrown away.
It is amazing to attend a meeting and hear people talk at length about everything that is wrong with landfills and why we should not have them, yet when asked about what to do with garbage say, “dump it somewhere else.”
If hauling our garbage someplace else is good for the health and local environment, what does it do to the place we take it. Obviously it is probably bad for their health and environment.
Now I read we can haul our garbage to Ottawa or Pontiac for only $1 a month per household. Great for us, but maybe they don’t think it is so great.
Morris people have complained endlessly about garbage from the Chicago area being brought to our landfills. Now we are dumping on others and it better be cheap.
There is a lot of talk about the substances found in some area wells.
A lot of hazardous materials are found in household waste, which ends up in landfills.
Thallium, which is a very toxic substance, in the past was used in rat poison and insecticides.
It is used in electronics, but it is also in glass and radioactive thallium is used in nuclear medicine. It also exists in the earth’s crust.
Antimony is used as a fire retardant in many products, as a pigment in paint and it is used as an alloy to harden lead.
No one would want either of these substances in their water. But they have been and continue to be used in a lot of common products.
People throw away electronics, paint, lead batteries, clothing and glass, so they will be in every landfill.
There are three landfills within a one-mile stretch of Ashley Road.
By most accounts Environtech is the best operated of the three and they claim test wells show nothing is leaking from their landfill.
If anything is coming from a landfill, it would seem most likely it would be from the landfill the city operated in the 1970’s or the landfill Community operated in the 1980’s and 1990’s. But those landfills are no longer operational and won’t expand.
The same company which operates Environtech, Republic, formerly Allied Waste, also operates the landfill in Pontiac.
If Environtech leaks, there is reason to believe the landfill in Pontiac leaks.
If the people of Pontiac love their landfill and are happy to take Grundy County’s trash, then the problem is solved for now.
But I suspect they like their landfill about as much as we like ours.
Michael Farrell is a writer at the Morris Daily Herald. He can be reached at (815) 942-3221 x 2028 or by e-mail at mfarrell@morrisdailyherald.com
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