Yes In My Backyard

I was corresponding yesterday with someone about the West Virginia garbage wars of the late 80's and early 90's, during which there was great moral outrage against the prospect of "out-of-state garbage" being dumped in West Virginia, and fervent opposition (including from my church)  against a large landfill in McDowell County. The environmentalists didn't seem to understand that, in order to be able to afford the extensive liners, monitoring and other environmental protections that we should (and do) demand of our landfills, we need to bring in large amounts of garbage for which fees can be charged. West Virginia simply doesn't produce the garbage to support lots of little local landfills. Furthermore, the tipping fees, or taxes that the garbage haulers pay, go to help pay for closure of old landfills that weren't properly designed or operated. 

So today we have a situation where the DEP was reportedly trying to stop a hauler from taking waste to Ohio because the fees are needed in West Virginia.  (To be fair, the DEP wasn't fanning flames against out-of-state garbage 20 years ago.)  And we have resource recovery companies that are coming into the state, offering to pay money for the right to "mine" all that old garbage, and reuse 90% of it.  If we had taken in more garbage years ago, we could make more money from it in the future.

And then I read this from Forbes about a community that wants to be the nuclear waste repository for the nation. Here's a teaser from the article's beginning:

Christopher Helman, Forbes Staff


There’s a secure solution to America’s nuclear waste problem: bury it under Carlsbad, New Mexico. The locals are ready — if only Washington would get out of the way.

Unlike thousands of other places in America, where the thought of trucking in barrels of radioactive garbage from atomic weapons plants would lead to marches, face paint and, invariably, pandering politicians (witness Nevada’s stalled Yucca Mountain project), Carlsbad has a different take. “It’s really a labor of love,” says Forrest. “We’ve proven that nuclear waste can be disposed of in a safe, reliable way.”

This attitude—“Yes in my backyard,” if you will—has brought near permanent prosperity to this isolated spot that until recently had no endemic economic engine. Unemployment sits at 3.8%, versus 6.5% statewide and 8.5% nationally. And thanks to this project—euphemistically known as the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, or WIPP—New Mexico has received more than $300 million in federal highway funds in the past decade, $100 million of which has gone into the roads around Carlsbad. WIPP is the nation’s only permanent, deep geologic repository for nuclear waste. The roads have to be good for the two dozen trucks a week hauling in radioactive drums brimming with the plutonium-laden detritus of America’s nuclear weapons production.