Towns Seek to Chart a Better Course for Regional Trash Disposal
Methods

By IAN FEIN

The Vineyard is taking a fresh look at how it handles its trash.

Selectmen from Tisbury and Oak Bluffs on Monday will take up the
possibility of hiring the Martha's Vineyard Refuse Disposal and
Resource Recovery District to manage their municipal solid waste, which,
if it happened, would mark the first time in roughly 15 years that all
six towns on the Island are working together under a unified trash
disposal system.

Meanwhile, the regional refuse district is hoping to sign within the
next two weeks a purchase and sale agreement for an 11-acre property
directly behind its base operation on the Edgartown-West Tisbury Road.

District officials say the cooperation and expansion are both
necessary steps to improve their current functions and accommodate the
possibility of future services such as composting and a more
comprehensive recycling program. The potential developments come at a
time when the Vineyard is facing rising fuel costs and a rapidly growing
amount of solid waste produced on the Island each year.

"Economically, these are steps we have to take, because
otherwise it is just going to keep getting more expensive," said
refuse district manager Donald Hatch, who has been visiting selectmen
across the Island to apprise them of the developing situation. "We
need to join forces to control our overall long-term cost. This could
get out of control very easily if we're not careful."

Island residents may not think much about what happens to their
trash after they drop it off at the local transfer station.

Since all six Vineyard landfills were capped and closed over the
last decade, virtually all of the solid waste produced here is shipped
off Island and then trucked to a mainland incinerator or landfill.

Between 1997 and 2002, the amount of solid waste produced on the
Vineyard each year grew from just under 14,000 tons to more than 18,000
tons, but the rate of increase has since jumped dramatically. Numbers
compiled last summer put the total amount of solid waste and
construction debris collected in all six towns at 29,000 tons, while a
separate unofficial estimate, which includes trash handled by private
haulers, approached a total of 40,000 tons shipped off Island last year.

With growing awareness about the rising price of fuel, looming
impacts of climate change and comprehensive planning efforts under way
at the Martha's Vineyard Commission, the Vineyard Conservation
Society this winter authored a position paper calling for a radical
shift in the way the Island handles its solid waste. The nonprofit
environmental advocacy group has a long track record in the field,
having developed the first recycling program on the Vineyard in 1971,
and sponsoring the annual Earth Day beach clean up on the Island each
spring.

"In an age of rising fuel costs, uncertain supplies, and
global warming, taking integrated local responsibility for reducing our
waste footprint makes both financial and environmental sense," the
conservation society wrote in the letter, which called for hiring an
outside professional consultant to assist with the work of the Island
Plan devoted to waste disposal.

The conservation society distributed its position paper across the
Island and received widespread support from nearly every board of
selectmen, the Dukes County Charter Study Commission and the regional
refuse district.

David Nash, a conservation society director and a member of the
Island Plan waste work group, said he was heartened by the reaction that
the paper received. He spent more than a decade working as the director
of engineering and enforcement in the Connecticut bureau of waste
management, and said he was surprised by the state of the Vineyard trash
system when he moved to the Island full time a number of years ago.

"It needs work," Mr. Nash said this month. "We
have such an intelligent, hardworking and caring population here. Yet we
don't seem to put our money, our taxes, to good use in building an
infrastructure that makes this a better place to live."

Ideas expressed in the position paper and embraced by the Island
Plan work group include: improved sorting of recyclable material, a
construction debris and building re-use program, and composting of
organic waste.

Cooperation among all six towns is seen as a vital first step to
improving Island waste management. The current balkanized system is
fraught with inefficiencies and also creates confusion among many
Vineyard residents about their local recycling programs.

Refuse district officials say acquisition of the 11-acre property
adjacent to the 23-acre Edgartown transfer station is necessary to
accommodate the goals, as well as to better handle some of existing
functions and traffic flow. The refuse district will hold one of its
periodic hazardous waste collection days tomorrow, and is also seeking a
permit for year-round waste oil storage, currently unavailable on the
Island.

"To offer more of these services, we need to start spreading
out," Mr. Hatch said. "We know we will need more space in
the future."

In order to buy the property, the refuse district will likely need
voter approval from its four member towns to borrow money in excess of
its current bonding limit. Though an agreement with the seller has yet
to be signed, the proposed purchase price is understood to fall
somewhere between $1 and $2 million. Mr. Hatch has approached Island
selectmen to inform them of the possible need to call a special town
meeting on the issue. He said reaction has been universally positive,
with some sensitivity to cost and the potential difficulty of securing
appropriate permits for the expanded site.

He said member towns would also like to see some sort of financial
commitment from Tisbury and Oak Bluffs, which left the regional refuse
district in 1994 and privatized their operations. Their current
five-year contract with Allied Waste is set to expire later this year,
and selectmen from both towns will meet together on Monday to consider
private bids for operating their transfer stations, as well as a
proposal from the regional refuse district.

Tisbury public works director Fred LaPiana said selectmen have not
yet decided which route to take, but he noted that talks between the
district and two towns have been largely positive.

"Discussions are going very well with regard to some of the
common issues we face," Mr. LaPiana said. "And hopefully,
from some of those discussions, the Island as a whole will
benefit."

The pending decision by Tisbury and Oak Bluffs is also influencing
the possible purchase of the 11-acre property, which is seen as
necessary to handle the waste from those two town transfer stations.

"We all agree that the purchase of this land is critical to
creating a regional future," Dukes County Commission member
Carlene Gatting said at an Edgartown selectmen's meeting this
week. "We think it's a unique opportunity, and one that
shouldn't be missed."