Greensboro trash politics

Greensboro City Council will be interviewing five private companies proposing to handle the city’s solid waste on Tuesday, beginning at 1 p.m.

Consultant Joseph Readling told council earlier this week that the five proposals basically provide three options: Three proposals would reopen the White Street Landfill to municipal solid waste, one would essentially continue the city’s present arrangement of trucking garbage down to Montgomery County, and one would operate an advanced pyrolysis facility at the present at the city transfer station on Burnt Poplar Road.

According to the city’s current schedule, which is considered “aggressive,” the city would negotiate a contract by May 31 and the new arrangement would be in place by July 1.

The conventional wisdom about the politics of the decision is that there are three automatic votes against reopening the landfill: at-large Councilman Robbie Perkins, District 1 Councilwoman Dianne Bellamy-Small and District 2 Councilman Jim Kee. Mayor Pro Tem Nancy Vaughan has said she will have to be recused from voting as long as Waste Industries, which receives legal representation from her husband, remains among the proposers. Vaughan noted during the 2009 campaign that she was on the city council when the vote was taken to close the White Street Landfill and favored a regional solution to the city’s solid waste needs.

That leaves five other council members who are undecided about whether or not to open the White Street Landfill. Mayor Bill Knight, at-large Councilman Danny Thompson, District 4 Councilwoman Mary Rakestraw and District 5 Councilwoman Trudy Wade are considered more fiscal conservative and more likely to place a premium on the immediate cost savings that would be realized by reopening the landfill. District 3 Councilman Zack Matheny is considered more moderate and a potential swing vote.

During his campaign for city council in 2009, Thompson could be counted in the don’t-reopen-the-landfill column, and also in the don’t-continue-to-send-waste-down-the-road column. Like former Mayor Yvonne Johnson and future District 2 Councilman Kee at the time, he favored a third way of utilizing alternative technology. Eighteen months later, the third way is looking less viable.

“I would not be in favor of opening the White Street Landfill to household waste,” Thompson told voters during a candidate forum sponsored by Guilford County Unity Effort in September 2009, adding that he was also not in favor of continuing to transport waste out of the county. “Now, I think what we can do is, as has been stated before, technology has advanced to where we can turn our trash into treasure, be it an incinerator, be it covering it and tapping the methane gas, or be it contracting out and allowing miners to go in to be able to dig through the trash and do whatever miners do with trash. We need to start that discussion now on a regional basis instead of just trucking our trash down the highway because we’re going to be — when our contract comes up for renewal, it’s going to be a matter of if it’s going to be double, triple or quadruple the price. And so just wiping our hands from it and charging the taxpayers $2 million a year to truck it down the highway — it’s not an easy solution, but I don’t believe the solution is opening the landfill.”

Asked about his previous position today, Thompson noted that in his 2009 campaign ad in The Rhinoceros Times he spoke out against transporting the city’s solid waste to a landfill in Montgomery County.

“I still believe that the first part I campaigned on: We’ve got to quit trucking our trash to Montgomery County,” he said. “It’s too expensive. We’re going to see that this summer. It’s going to put a crimp in our budget. As I have made the transition from being a candidate and looking at doing some research on the [alternative] technology, it doesn’t appear that technology is the most cost effective, nor is it something that’s being utilized on a regular scale here in the United States.”

Thompson said another alternative floated last fall — to dispose of the city’s solid waste in a regional landfill in neighboring Randolph County — also looks unviable.

“There is no Randolph County regional landfill,” he said. [The NC Department of Environment and Natural Resources] is permitting less and less landfill. We don’t have that many options. We either continue what we’re doing or we look at for a short-term we open up the landfill and we do things that don’t impede the neighborhood as much as used to whether it’s buffers or coming in from the backside of Cone Boulevard or US Highway 29 or…. It looks like gas prices are going to continue to rise, and that’s a very long way. Montgomery County is a poorer county than Guilford County, so we shouldn’t pat ourselves on the back and say, ‘We’re doing the right thing by continuing to send it there.’”

Other council members on the record:

Mayor Knight, League of Women Voters candidate forum, Sept. 15, 2009: “I would want to explore outsourcing — having an outside contractor own and operate the landfill.”

Perkins, Guilford County Unity Effort candidate forum, Sept. 22, 2009: “This issue has torn the guts out of this city. The city council made a decision — Ms. Vaughan was a part of it, and I was a part of it — to not open the White Street Landfill to municipal solid waste. And it wasn’t based solely on the numbers. It was based on the fact that it was the right thing to do for this community.”

Bellamy-Small, Guilford County Unity Effort candidate forum, Sept. 8, 2009: “I will not support opening the landfill for any reason.”

Wade, March 15 council meeting: “I don’t think any of us have made up our minds.”

Look for more coverage of Greensboro solid waste politics at the YES! Weekly blog over the weekend, particularly comparative analysis of the five proposals, in the run-up to Tuesday’s interview session.

UPDATE: Vaughan tells me that if, through some fluke, Waste Industries were eliminated from consideration, she would then be allowed to vote on the final proposals. It's an interesting twist, considering that Vaughan has made a point of saying that she was on the council that original voted to close the WSL and would presumably be against reopening. It will be interesting to see if Perkins & co. try to maneuver to get Waste Industries eliminated from a short list of proposers under final consideration under the expectation that they'll be able to corral an extra vote for keeping the landfill closed. Conversely, I would expect Wade & co. to strenuously object to the same. Or am I way too paranoid?