RECYCLING IS DIVERSE, COMPLEX, WORTH CONSIDERING

I would like to comment on the recent editorial, "Recycling matters." While it may be true that municipalities such as Cape Girardeau have been mandated by Senate Bill 530 (The Omnibus Solid Waste Management Law) to reduce waste going to landfills, there are also some underlying reasons of value to society other than a governmental mandate. Saving landfill space in the Southeast Missouri Solid Waste Management District, which includes Bollinger, Cape Girardeau, Iron, Madison, Perry, St. Francois and Ste. Genevieve counties, is a mute point, because there are no operational landfills in this district. Saving landfill space in other landfills may be an issue.

Saving landfill space isn't the key issue. First of all, many of the landfills that were opened prior to April 9, 1994, didn't take precautions to protect groundwater systems affected by any leachates coming out of the landfill. New mandates require impermeable liners, leachate collection and methane gas collection. This isn't to say that there still won't be problems affecting groundwater systems. In the seven-county waste management district, Cape Girardeau draws its water from the Mississippi River and is investigating the use of wells for additional water supply. Perryville uses a series of wells in addition to drawing water from Saline Creek. Ironton has a surface water reservoir from which it draws water. All other water supplies in the management district draw their water from groundwater, including municipalities, private business and industry in certain circumstances, and public water supply districts. Because of the karst geology and the significant problems with soil and geologic conditions within the district, every precaution must be taken to protect the groundwater system. Frankly, to the best of my knowledge, no one knows exactly where the water flows underground or how far pollution in one county may travel and affect water supplies in another county.

Regardless, we still need to have landfills for items that cannot be reused, and we are likely to have them for a long time. Therefore, they must be constructed in a reasonable manner and operated as efficiently as they can be.

With the cost of construction of new landfills, one of the issues is taking whatever steps possible to minimize what is going into the landfill so the life of the landfill will be extended to the maximum possible extent.

The editorial said, in part: "But newsprint is a renewable resource, and trees are planted at a rate that exceeds their consumption for newsprint." While this may be true, trees aren't planted only for newsprint. There are many other uses for trees, including wood for construction. To imply that just because recycling is going on and there are more trees planted than the newsprint mills utilize is somewhat misleading, because trees are being cut at a rate that should at least cause some concern. We have many trees standing, but many of them aren't very usable for lumber because of their size and slow growth. Others aren't usable for newsprint.

According to a study by the Environmental Improvement and Energy Resources Authority or Missouri, the category of secondary fibers -- corrugated cardboard, kraft paper, newsprint, office paper, magazines and other non-recyclable paper -- makes up 41 percent of the municipal solid waste stream by weight, thus filling valuable landfill space. This is by far the largest single category of materials in the municipal solid waste stream.

Further, your editorial raised the issue of incineration. This has been investigated on several occasions in Southeast Missouri. A number of years ago the Southeast Missouri Regional Port Authority looked at the option of burning waste to create electricity. It has never happened, and because of the cost there is some doubt that it will happen in the foreseeable future. More recently, the cities of Perryville and Ste. Genevieve and Perry County and Ste. Genevieve County jointly funded a study by R.W. Beck and Associates of St. Paul, Minn., looking at alternatives for the two-county area for disposal of waste. One of the issues considered was incineration. The cost for construction and operation of an incineration unit simply isn't justifiable at the present time in this waste management district. In addition, there are considerable difficulties in obtaining any permits for incineration in Missouri. Rolla invested several hundred thousand dollars a number of years ago with the intent of incinerating its waste. To the best of my knowledge, the entire unit is still sitting in crates and wasn't assembled due to the lack of permits. Personally, I don't understand why other states issue permits and allow incineration as a viable means for waste disposal and Missouri doesn't. Arkansas has successfully incinerated waste, created energy and created an industrial park around such facilities. It is virtually an impossibility to achieve such success in Missouri for some reason.

Another important consideration when considering incineration is the treatment and handling of combustor ash. On May 2, 1994, the U.S. Supreme Court issued an opinion interpreting a section of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, regarding municipal waste-to-energy facilities. The court held that, although municipal waste-to-energy facilities that burn household wastes specifically, or in combination with other non-hazardous waste from industrial and commercial sources, are exempt from regulation as hazardous waste treatment, storage or disposal facilities, the ash they generate isn't exempt. As a result, waste-to-energy facilities must determine if the ash they generate is hazardous. This determination is normally made by subjecting samples of the ash to testing to determine the presence of certain hazardous components. This testing is very costly. If it is determined that the ash contains levels of certain hazardous components above the allowable level, then the ash must be classified as hazardous waste. Once the ash is classified as hazardous waste, the handling and treatment of the ash also become very costly.

The issue of flow control also must be an important consideration when evaluating not only the alternative of incineration, but all options evaluated when considering the development of a major waste disposal facility. As you are aware, local government doesn't currently have the authority to designate the final disposal site for the municipal solid waste that is generated in its jurisdiction. This fact results in the lack of any guarantee that a waste-to-energy facility would continue to receive the necessary amount of waste to meet the demand for the energy that is generated.

Add to this the fact that the materials that are recovered are reusable and save other energy costs associated with the processing of metals, paper and plastic. There is a motivation, or at least should be, for recycling. We as a society have grown to be extremely wasteful of our resources. It is appalling to me that we ship waste to foreign countries, and they can make a profit our of our waste, but we cannot seem to accomplish this in our own country.

Cost avoidance with recycling is an important issue. Cost avoidance isn't normally accounted for when figuring the cost of recycling. To figure cost avoidance you need to know how much it is going to cost you to dispose of the waste in an approved landfill and how much will be received for recycling the materials versus the cost of collecting and processing the recyclables.

One area in which cost avoidance is being realized more and more is in the savings being realized by business and industry across the state and across the nation through the establishment of recycling programs. Many businesses are realizing monthly savings in the thousands of dollars through the avoided cost of disposing of waste materials through landfilling. Many businesses and industrial facilities are charged according to the weight of waste materials that are collected for disposal and not by the volume of waste materials that they generate for disposal. This can result in a substantial savings through avoided disposal costs, if an active recycling program is implemented and maintained.

I, like most citizens, am fed up with having mandates shoved down my throat by government. Regardless, recycling is still a needed alternative for the handling of solid waste. The materials recovered can be further utilized for society's purposes and hold other reserves for future generations' needs

Thomas G. Tucker is the executive director of the Southeast Missouri Regional Planning and Economic Development Commission, with offices in Perryville.