State Government
News
Officials Not
Ready to Junk Recycling Program
By Steve Tuttle
Many
landfills around the state were running out of room and costs for
opening new ones were rising rapidly when state officials in 1991
announced an ambitious recycling plan that would cut the amount of
trash we dispose of by 40 percent over 10 years. But chagrined
officials announced last month that the recycling effort hadn’t met
expectations.
How badly did the state miss
its goal? According to a report by the state Department of Environment
and Natural Resources (DENR), the amount of trash going to landfills
across North Carolina didn’t go down at all over the past decade; in
fact it went up.
Statewide, the amount of
trash going to landfills increased from 6.8 million tons in fiscal
1991-92 to 9.75 million tons in fiscal 2000-01. During that period the
state’s population rose from 6.78 million to 8.05 million and the
amount of trash each person threw away went up, from 1.01 tons to 1.21
tons per person. The goal had been to reduce the per capita disposal
rate to .67 tons.
At the current rate of
growth, North Carolinians could be throwing away 13 million tons of
trash by 2010, nearly twice what we sent to landfills only two decades
ago.
The DENR report blames the
economic boom during the1990s for most of the growth in waste. The
growth in disposable incomes led to a growth in the consumption and
disposal of consumer goods and packaging, as well as increased waste
generated at businesses, industries and construction sites.
Despite the disappointing
statistics, DENR officials weren’t prepared to concede that the
recycling effort was a waste. The report insists that the amount of
trash recycled here is about the same as in most other states, at
around 25 percent or higher of disposable material. Recycling and yard
waste programs run by local governments consistently divert close to
one million tons per year from landfills. Recovery rates for newsprint
and cardboard are estimated to be more than 50 percent, although some
other materials lag behind.
“Recycling remains one of
the most powerful environmental actions that citizens can take,”
said DENR Secretary Bill Ross. “We hope progress in this area will
help us reduce our growing dependence on landfill disposal.”
Ross said he was
particularly encouraged by the growth of private-sector recycling
businesses, especially for construction and demolition waste. He said
a DENR study in 2000 found that recycling businesses account for
approximately 12,000 jobs in North Carolina.
However, prices paid for
recyclable commodities have fallen in the face of the economic
downturn and competition with declining virgin material prices.
Increased efforts to buy products made of recycled material are
effective, but need to expand to improve recycling market conditions,
he said.
State Plans New Psychiatric
Hospital: Officials with the N.C. Department of Health and Human
Services recently announced plans to close two facilities, John
Umstead Hospital in Butner and Dorothea Dix Hospital in Raleigh, and
replace them with a new facility in a more central location.
DHHS Secretary Carmen Hooker
Odom said the move will save money in the long run “because we can
build a new state-of-the-art facility for less than the cost of
patching up the two existing hospitals so they are just functional at
best.” She said a new facility would cost $98 million to build vs.
$160 million to renovate the two existing hospitals.
One possible location for
the new psychiatric hospital has been identified in Chatham County,
although other locations will be considered.
“Umstead was originally
built as a prisoner of war compound in the 1940s. It was never
intended to be a permanent mental health facility. In essence, we have
been working out of a temporary facility for more than five
decades,” she explained. “The Dix facility is also quite outmoded.
Folks who need institutional care deserve better.”
The new hospital will be
financed by issuing certificates of participation, a form of financing
in which an individual buys a share of the lease revenues of a
governmental entity, instead of using state appropriations.
The state maintains two
other psychiatric hospitals — Broughton Hospital in Morganton,
which services western North Carolina, and Cherry Hospital in
Goldsboro, which serves eastern North Carolina. The state will use
money that would have been used to repair and renovate Dix and Umstead
to update these two facilities.
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