Trashopolis

On a mid-May afternoon, the wind gusts over Beaver County, bending treetops and skimming dust from gravel roads. Despite the sunshine, a killjoy chill in the air threatens the unusually warm and eager spring

Aug 1, 2007  

by Scott Messenger

“We are a consumer society,” says Hugo. “We manufacture things and once we have finished using them something has to be done. You can recycle it and use it again for something, but sooner or later it’s going to come to the point where it has to be disposed of. You can talk about all the benefits of recycling and waste reduction, and they’re all good things, but eventually you have to face this reality.”

Which means the flow of waste – perhaps one day reduced to a trickle – won’t run dry. Dealing with it is a necesity, says Hugo, “but if it’s done right, it isn’t an evil.”

“Years ago, there was hardly any science attached to it,” adds Wright. “Landfills are a collage of science now.”

Within the next five years, says Hugo, such science will be installed at Beaver Regional, with plans for methane recovery and for gasification for generating electricity both in the works. The key to attracting companies like Deutz AG and Caterpillar as partners and equipment suppliers, says Wright, is reaching a critical mass of trash. But he’s convinced the days of having that mass fester forever are gone.

“We were the villains,” he says. “For the last 20 years we all had to save the world from landfills, but now landfills are becoming the central processing area for a valuable natural resource. We’re not going to continue to be the villains. We’re going to do amazing things.”

The view from the ground isn’t as good as from the summit of Beaver Regional Landfill. From Marilynn Fenske’s place, a pale blue mobile home surrounded by a section of hay fields and cattle pasture, it’s what you’d probably expect. Less than half a kilometre away, the north face of the landfill, where the most recent loads have been buried, is littered with errant refuse.

“It was nice before the landfill came in,” says Fenske, who’s lived here since 1980. “We didn’t have the [equipment] beepers, we didn’t have the blowing garbage that I’m constantly picking up. Cows don’t digest plastic. They’ll eat it if it’s in with the hay.” Her partner, Lee, remembers when snow geese once congregated in a nearby quarter in such numbers that “you couldn’t fit another four geese in that field. The kinds of birds we attract now are gulls and ravens and magpies.”

And while other neighbours have taken buyouts, the Fenskes say the offer made to them wouldn’t cover setting up elsewhere. Down the road, Doyle Booth, who makes part of his living raising quarter horses, has the same concern.

“I do want to sell,” says Booth, who claims appraisal of his land failed to take into account things like his calf-roping arena and the sand he brought in for it. “I can’t figure out why it should cost me to move. For me to pay $40,000 to $50,000 to buy something else, it just doesn’t make sense while these guys are making millions.”

“It’s a shame that a few people have to pay the cost of living so close,” concedes Ron Yarham, Beaver County reeve. “But overall, for the county as a whole, it does save the rural people of having to pay that extra mill rate that we would have to put into the budget for landfilling.”

For the moment, this service, along with the creation of 23 municipal jobs that will keep a few families living on local farms or in town, is one of the few tangible benefits so far realized. As Holden Mayor and Commission board member Ivan Hrabec admits, “profits have not been there to give dividends as of yet.” Revenues for 2006 totaled about $3.6 million – a little less than transition expenses. But as the Commission matures in its new role as operator, he’s certain the landfill will “give us something that we can live with, that our kids can live with.” Gasification, for instance, could see the Commission trading carbon credits earned by reducing landfill mass, generating further revenue. And methane harvested from the site could provide cheap heating for Beaver County’s nearby Equity Industrial Park, empty at present but courting prospective businesses. The effect that any of this will have on the local economy, however, right now exists only in the realm of possibility.

Tofield Mayor Nabil Chehayeb, also a Commission board member, is directing his attention to his town’s burgeoning industrial manufacturing sector. “We are glad to have the landfill in our area,” says Chehayeb, “but this is not what we’re banking on. It’s not going to be as big as other projects on our plate right now.”

Or is it? Borrowing liberally from the Book of Genesis, Wright is willing to risk a little hubris to give a sense of just what’s coming – and, perhaps, to the misfortune of hangers-on like Fenske and Booth, of what it would take to halt progress.

“You remember the last time they built something this high?” he asks. “God got very concerned and muddled our language. Remember that little story?

“What you’re seeing today,” he adds, “is nothing.”

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