Mixed Garbage and Trash Dumps in Cities

1. Have the multi billion dollar garbage and trash transfer companies of BFI, Waste Management and Waste USA pursued a conscious or unconscious racist policy of selecting inappropriate sites and using inappropriately designed facilities which have been operated in an inappropriate manner which have adversely affected nearby African- American and Asian-American businesses and residents in the District of Columbia?

2. Has the District of Columbia government been corrupted by the influence paid for by BFI, Waste Management and Waste USA and their affiliates?

3. Are BFI, Waste Management and Waste USA so morally adrift that they have so little respect for the Seat of Government of the United States of America that each would choose and use totally inappropriate facilities and methods of operation in the congested city of the District of Columbia without any regard to local laws and the adverse impact each operation has had on the surrounding neighbors?

4. Is the attack waged by BFI, Waste Management and Waste USA on the District of Columbia indicative of attacks to come on other minority controlled jurisdictions locally, nationally and internationally?

5. Is the inability and failure of the District of Columbia government to protect its residents and its businesses from offensive and adverse impacts from garbage and trash transfer stations one more indictment of the home rule government of the District of Columbia government or one more reason why the District of Columbia needs to be part of State, where it would receive the protection from a State as have the nearby counties of Montgomery County and Prince Georges County in Maryland and Fairfax County and the City of Manassas, in Virginia.?

BACKGROUND:

The locally elected government of the District of Columbia, subject to the exclusive legislative authority of Congress, operates Fort Totten, a solid waste transfer station used by the government and D.C. residents to drop off garbage, trash, bulky objects such as refrigerators, yard waste and other solid waste. There are many residences and businesses near the site, as well as Catholic University. This site is large, perhaps 15 or more acres, but is notorious for its negligent design and operation, its inefficiency, its costliness and for the adverse impacts (via smells, rodents, traffic) it has on nearby property values and quality of life.

B. PRIVATE ENTERPRISE IS WORSE THAN THE GOVERNMENT

Three private garbage and trash transfer stations are no better but handle much more solid waste than Fort Totten on much smaller space with other businesses and residents much closer and directly impacted. BFI, Waste Management of Maryland and Waste USA each operate sites in one case using only 5,000 sq. ft. to collect over 1,000 tons of garbage and trash a day, each of which is surrounded by other businesses and/or residents. Two of the sites' buildings with huge exhaust fans blowing out offensive odors abut food wholesale businesses owned and operated by racial minorities, one abuts a shopping center, one is 30 feet across the street from a carry out/diner and within 40 feet of seven other businesses employing a total of over 50 employees, each of whom has had to endure the offensive odors of an open air garbage and trash transfer station. This latter one began without warning two years ago and caused a business neighbor to file a law suit based on the common law of nuisance.

THE PROBLEM:

C. THE CITY GOVERNMENT HAS FAILED TO EFFECTIVELY REGULATE

The District of Columbia government has failed to file its own common law nuisance law suit and has forced the local business to carry all of the costs and all of the nuisance even though the law makes it clear that it is the Mayor's duty to remove public nuisances and the D.C. zoning regulations state that it is the city's corporation counsel's job to file law suits to enforce the zoning regulations. That private lawsuit is still active, headed for trial three years after it was filed. Each of these big three garbage and trash transfer station operators has caused its neighbors to complain loudly about an increase in rats, flies, roaches, foul odors, hundreds of huge trucks blocking local traffic each day, some of which use the public roads to drop filled dumpsters and shake the foundations of nearby homes. The District of Columbia government has been unable to find the authority or the way to protect its residents and businesses from this onslaught, showing greater interest in how to attract garbage and trash transfer stations than how to keep residents or other businesses. One of the sites in D.C. has 70 percent of its garbage and trash coming from the nearby suburbs, the contents of which are waste from industries, gas stations, laboratories, office buildings, doctor's offices, drug treatment centers, apartment buildings, hotels, and elsewhere. Local regulations even allow these sites to receive "medical waste".

D. NEARBY JURISDICTIONS HAVE BETTER PROTECTIONS

In every place except the District of Columbia, local health and zoning laws are the primary tools used to regulate offensive activities such as garbage and trash transfer stations. The District of Columbia then becomes the place of choice to locate a garbage and trash transfer station on the cheap, on inadequate space, in an inappropriate site, run in an inappropriate manner causing unacceptable adverse impacts. Other localities surrounding the District of Columbia have long ago adopted regulations which protect their residents and businesses from adverse impacts from garbage and trash transfer stations. The state of Virginia has a 50 foot buffer requirement and other regulations governing site location, manner of operation, traffic, hours of operation, etc. which must be met before any place in Virginia is used as a garbage and trash transfer station. As in Maryland, the County where the site is proposed must first decide to approve the use of the site as an exception or a variance to the current zoning. The County or City Council in Maryland or Virginia can impose stricter standards than those of the State, such as Prince Georges County in Maryland which imposed a 500 foot buffer of space requirement between any part of the building used to transfer garbage and trash and another person's property line. In the City of Manassas, Virginia, the City Council controls the zoning of the city, as does the Prince Georges's County Council in Maryland, and allowed only one garbage and trash transfer station in the City limits, requiring the facility to accept all of the City collected garbage and trash, limiting the facility to less than 500 tons a day, requiring City Council approval of the site prior to its use and prohibiting garbage and trash from nearby Fairfax County and other areas from coming to the facility. Interestingly, the owner and operator of the City of Manassas' only garbage and trash transfer station is Waste Management of Virginia and one of its main users is BFI, who happens to also have been the competitor who proposed an alternative site to the City of Manassas City Council and lost out to Waste Management.

E. D.C.'S LAWS ARE IGNORED AND SKIRTED.

None of the "big three" operators of the three private sites in the District of Columbia applied to or received any approval from the District of Columbia's unelected Board of Zoning Appeals which hears petitions for variances or special exceptions to the Zoning Regulations. For years the District's Zoning Administrator, the District employee charged with the responsibility of interpreting the Zoning Regulations on a day to day basis, took the clear and well known position that any applicant for a garbage and trash transfer station certificate of occupancy first had to obtain approval from the Board of Zoning Appeals because the Zoning Regulations did not specify that any zoning district could be used for a garbage and trash transfer station. In effect, this was the very same direction and system used in Virginia and Maryland. However, the private operators chose to skirt that policy by using vague language in applications for certificates of occupancy, which when granted for example to do processing, would avoid the public hearing process of the Board of Zoning Appeals and instead hide the intention to operate a garbage and trash transfer station. The "big three" have defended their use of these facilities by claiming that a vague or unlimited word in the certificate of occupancy entitled each to operate a garbage and trash transfer station.

For example, BFI and Waste Management of Maryland rely on the word "processing" in the certificate of occupancy for the site to entitle each to operate a garbage and trash transfer station. Although each uses different sites, neither has a certificate of occupancy in its own name contrary to the zoning laws of the District of Columbia and instead relies on an earlier user's certificate of occupancy to continue to justify the current use. The third company, Waste USA, bought the corporation which holds the certificate of occupancy, but that certificate says nothing about garbage and trash. In the case of the certificate of Waste Management, the city has challenged its certificate of occupancy and the Board of Zoning Appeals has decided that the certificate of occupancy has been improperly issued, but that case is now before the D.C. Court of Appeals which might decide the issue in a couple of years. In the meanwhile, the illegal use of the site continues. The city has not brought similar challenges against the other two sites, even though the same arguments could be raised against the insufficiency of the certificates of occupancy for those sites.

F. CITY COUNCIL HAS MADE THE PROBLEM WORSE WITH BAD LAW.

To compound the problems, the City Council passed a licensing bill known as the Solid Waste Facilities Permit Act of 1995 which authorized the Mayor to issue interim operating permits to the "existing facilities" while enforcing all health and zoning laws. That contradictory direction was used by the city's Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs to issue interim operating permits for the three sites, even though none of them held a valid certificate of occupancy to use the site for a garbage and trash transfer station. Congress has declared that the Zoning Regulations, which require users of sites to have certificates of occupancy in their own names setting for the actual use, cannot be relaxed by any agency other than the D.C. Zoning Commission, yet the city's Corporation Counsel and the City Counsel and the Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs have relaxed the zoning requirements just for these three garbage and trash transfer stations without any concurrence from the Zoning Commission..

G. THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA ZONING COMMISSION IS AS BAD.

Four years ago community residents testified before the D.C.Zoning Commission when it was considering amendments to the D.C. Zoning Regulations to allow and to regulate recycling facilities for plastics, glass, metal, paper and other non organic products. The testimony begged the Zoning Commission to create protections against garbage and trash transfer stations, but the unelected Zoning Commission refused to do so at the urging of the Mayor Kelly's Office of Planning and Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs and Department of Public Works. Two of the five members on the Zoning Commission are federal ex officio appointees, one from the Architect of the Capitol and the other from the Department of Interior's National Park Service. The three local members are not elected and lack a staff and are otherwise employed in the private sector, able to give only limited time and attention to the testimony or record or hearings of the Commission. Although there might be extensive written submissions, their rules do not require anyone of them to read, understand or discuss these written submissions, but if they miss a hearing, they must only "review" the record and "read" the transcript. The transcript is usually copies of the oral testimony limited to 3 minutes for individuals and ten minutes for groups, lacking the logic and thoroughness of the written submissions. The D.C. Zoning Commission recently received over three nights of testimony and perhaps over a thousand pages of submissions along with videotapes in consideration of proposed amendments to the D.C.Zoning Regulations which if approved will allow garbage and trash transfer stations to be set up next to any other business in any Commercial/Manufacturing district which are primarily along the railroad lines in the Ward 5 area of the city.

H. THE FUTURE IN D.C.

The recent elections failed to make any change in the list of those who are responsible for the current situation in the District of Columbia. It appears that only the Mayor is in a position to change the direction of the past and to raise the protections the residents and the businesses in D.C. need. Those on the City Council and those in the bureaucracy are likely to simply repeat their mistakes of the past and to continue to justify those mistakes, rather than to admit to those mistakes.The federal government and Congress are not going to take any action to protect residents and businesses in D.C. if the local legislature fails to do so. The federal Environmental Protection Agency takes little if any interest in garbage and trash transfer stations, not because there is no hazardous waste at these facilities, which there is, but because the regulations of the federal EPA simply ignore that problem by creating an exception to hazardous waste definition and regulations by excepting solid waste brought to garbage and trash transfer stations from being regulated as hazardous waste.

The unelected judiciary in the District of Columbia has demonstrated in its written opinions a callous insensitivity to the adverse impacts of foul odors, rats, uncontrolled truck traffic and possible communication of disease while at the same time bending over backwards to protect capitalism, the free enterprise system and the breath of the commerce clause's application to the colony known as the District of Columbia. That same judiciary is also predetermined from too much experience validating these forgone conclusions, that nearly any argument raised by the District of Columbia Government lacks sufficient proof, is legally deficient, failed to provide adequate due process to the wrongdoers and is barred by contradictory behavior by some arm of the District of Columbia government.

THE SOLUTION

Shareholders and customers of BFI, Waste Management and Waste USA will have to fire management and direct these companies to pursue the highest qualities rather than the lowest denominators. Local and national campaigns will have to alert customers to make sure that their garbage and trash is transferred at a station that meets the highest standards for the state of the art of siting, designing, operating and monitoring garbage and trash transfer stations. There should be a no tolerance policy for government or private sector garbage and trash transfer stations being operated on the cheap and in ways less than the best possible. Recycling of resources will never be economically able to compete with cheap transfer stations leading to the dumping of recyclables. Customers who pay taxes or fees to remove their garbage and trash pay a lot already, and will be forced to pay more and more if the big three are allowed to underwrite their monopolization of the collection and the transfer industries by means of cheap and inappropriate garbage and trash transfer stations such as they operate in the nations' capital. Unions and other organized groups representing customers and municipalities should force these three companies to change what they are doing in the District of Columbia and to adopt enforceable procedures preventing them from doing anywhere else on earth what they are doing in our nation's capital.