Letter to the Editor: Third Option on the Ballot Regarding Solid Waste?

At the town hall meeting on February 24, County Council members Richard Fralick and Patty Miller offered us two options for solid waste to be put on November’s ballot:

1. close the solid waste facilities and force curbside pickup and recycling, or
2. keep the solid waste facilities open as-is by imposing a parcel tax.

This is a faulty way to go about things for several reasons:

1. San Juan Sanitation’s contract ends in 2012. This gives the county and the public little time to look for alternatives if we want to contract with somebody different;
2. same as #1, we’d have little time to look for a closer long-hauling solution than Eastern Oregon;
3. This puts the power in the County’s hands rather than the peoples’;
4. There is a third option not mentioned: Paying for solid waste and recycling and generating income by reducing, reusing, and recycling;

The third option could mean privatazion and forming a cooperative much like Opalco, where members pay a one-time membership fee and then pay for services wanted and vote in annual meetings. There are creative ways to generate income and the citizenry has the wherewithal to make that happen. We already know that we are shipping away things that could make soil: food waste, yard waste, newspaper, and cardboard. A community compost pile could make a viable product for sale, and people would buy it.

Our ideas aren’t taken seriously by the County. Why? They claim the numbers won’t support them; but we can’t compare numbers if the County is not doing regular independent audits and making them available to the public.  Last summer, a random survey was mailed out to about 1,000 people in the county. Regular independent audits of solid waste as part of a budget solution was overwhelmingly the top priority of those surveyed.

Please read the survey carefully to see if it reflects your goals and desires for where solid waste is going if left up to the council’s 2-choice ballot item. If not, make your voices known through letters, emails, and by becoming a regular witnessing presence at meetings discussing solid waste, including this Thursday’s EPRC meeting. We need the third option put on the ballot.

Here is the link to that survey www.sanjuanco.com/Docs/CAgendadocs/SanJuanSolidWasteSurvey_083010.pdf

Sadie Bailey
Eastsound