MINUTES OF THE SHAFTSBURY
SOLID WASTE TASK COMMITTEE
APRIL 20, 2004, COLE HALL, SHAFTSBURY, VERMONT
Attending:
Forrest Snyder, Owen Beauchesne, Trevor Mance, Bill Pennebaker, Michael Biddy,
Andrew Knafel, Jim Mead
Public attending: Jim Serrao
Absent: Mark Young, Barry Mayer, Karen.Mellinger
Andrew Knafel called the meeting to order at 7:05 pm.
The chair asked if everyone had had a chance to review the state regulations and
BCRC solid waste plan. He asked for comments and discussion.
Forrest brought up the lack of any definitive statement in the state regulations
that said a local municipality had to have a designated place for solid waste.
He commented that all he could find was that a town must have a plan to deal
with solid waste. As far as he could tell, having a plan to ship it out of the
town met the state's guidelines.
Andrew thought that the specific regulation was in another document. He thought
that David Mance would know.
Trevor wanted to make sure that everyone knew that the Town of Shaftsbury and
TAM were members of a New England recycling co-op based in New Hampshire. They
offer all kinds of products and help (marketing, economies of scale) to their
members.
Andrew and Trevor discussed plastic recycling and why it was so difficult to
recycle certain types of plastics. Trevor thought that, from his informal
analysis, most of the plastics in Shaftsbury were recyclable under the current
offerings. Trevor said there is a business in Canada that takes containers of
mixed plastics (#1-7), but our location in Southern Vermont didn't make using
such an outlet economically viable.
Owen advocated community (town) incentives to both waste collectors and
residents.
Bill brought up the idea of making the cost per bag high for trash and actually
paying folks for bags of recyclables (paid for by the high trash bag cost).
Andrew brought up compost. Andrew asked Trevor what percent of our waste stream
was compostable. Michael thought it was quite low. Something like 10%. Trevor
added that some waste haulers do run "green" trucks. County Waste in NY has such
a route.
Owen spoke to Bill Dailey and was very impressed with the amount of information
and depth to which the Dailey Corporation has explored C&D. In Owen's research,
he found very little federal regulation of C & D landfills. The EPA does not
feel that such facilities should have their supervision. The EPA would like it
handled on the state and local levels. In addition, Owen couldn't find any
regulations that allowed hazardous waste of any kind in C & D landfills.
Jim asked if there was another town with a C & D facility (besides Bennington)
that we could look at to see how and what they've done.
Michael explained that the pay-per-bag proposal that was floated several years
ago. The idea was to lower property taxes, encourage recycling, and have
residents pay for exactly what they threw away.
Andrew asked that members do specific areas of research for next meeting.
Andrew adjourned the meeting at 8:50 pm.
Submitted by Forrest Snyder