The probable expansion of the privately operated Eco-Vista Landfill, owned and lovingly named by Waste Management, is a testament to our region's normalcy.
That's not necessarily a good thing. Normal in modern American is wasteful.
In 2017, the landfill accepted slightly more than 524,405 tons of waste. Leaders of the company predict the landfill will run out of space in about five years at the current pace. And with Northwest Arkansas' rate of population growth and construction, nobody can reasonably suggest that pace will remain unchanged. Indeed, between 2013 and 2017, the volume of waste delivered to the landfill grew by more than 20 percent.
Trash, whether it's household garbage or all that wood, insulation and other materials generated by a robust construction industry, is a natural byproduct of a populated region. Well, natural in the sense that it's to be expected.
Recent developments make asking "What would we do if that landfill didn't exist" a worthwhile thought to ponder. Sure, waste management has asked for an expansion and they've got plenty of land in Tontitown to handle it. The Boston Mountain Solid Waste District, one of 18 state-created entities in Arkansas designed to monitor and manage waste needs, gave Waste Management its blessing for expansion a little more than a week ago.
Fayetteville Mayor Lioneld Jordan was the lone vote against expansion. Does that mean he's ready to shut the landfill down? No, but he was hoping for a little support from other board members -- mayors and county judges within Washington and Madison counties -- to use this moment to examine ways to reduce the volume of trash going into the landfill. That includes diverting waste through recycling, composting and reuse of materials.
Even with expansion, it's impossible not to recognize the landfill is not an unlimited resource. It's filling up. And the official policy of the Boston Mountain Solid Waste District is that there are no other suitable locations without the district for a new landfill.
What that means is the landfill is a precious resource. The alternative is to haul the region's waste elsewhere, an expensive proposition. That is, it's the alternative if nothing else changes. Jordan's contention is that Northwest Arkansas must change its handling of trash significantly, and sooner rather than later.
That won't be easy. Fayetteville and Prairie Grove collect and manage their own waste. Most everyone else contracts with a private hauler. I can't say it's true in every case, but in many cases that hauler is Waste Management.
Waste Management makes money by dumping materials into a landfill. It's challenging to see the company's motive to shift more waste out of the landfill.
Indeed, the landfill takes trash from well beyond the boundaries of its home waste district, even from places in Oklahoma and Missouri. If the landfill is intended to serve the needs of Northwest Arkansas, it doesn't seem smart that our hole in the ground should be filled with trash from beyond the state's borders, does it? But volume equals dollars in the trash disposal business.
If Waste Management completes the approval process for Phase I of the landfill expansion, it should add 12 years to the life of the Class I (household waste) landfill area and about eight years to the life of the Class IV area (construction waste), according to the company. Jordan believes those estimates are rosy, based on no growth.
He says all the cities and counties that send trash to Tontitown need to become more intense in developing regional recycling. Don't wait until the landfill's life is nearing it's end, he suggests. Every ton diverted from the landfill today extends the life of the landfill even more, he said.
This is a regional challenge, made difficult to solve because there's no "regional" power. Waste is handled on a city-by-city, county-by-county basis. In the last couple of years when Jordan attempted to gin up support for a regional recycling facility, he says he got little interest.
Sooner or later, that's going to have to change. Northwest Arkansas solved its water capacity issues more than 50 years ago through regional cooperation that got Beaver Lake built. It improved its connections to the rest of the world by cooperatively building a regional airport at Highfill.
Dealing with the region's waste will never quite be as politically sexy as either of those projects, but it's the responsible thing to do. Poor planning for the region's waste could eventually become a barrier to the region's growth.
Robyn Reed, director of the Boston Mountain Solid Waste District, says her organization received a state grant to examine a 10-year period to identify opportunities for waste reduction and recycling. "We have to figure out how to extend the life of that landfill," she said.
Everyone -- individuals, every city and county, and businesses -- generates trash. It's going to take leadership and changes for everyone before the region can develop a clear path for the future. It would seem, however, that a regional solution makes a lot more sense than everyone doing their own thing.
Commentary on 05/21/2018