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We're Green, Just Not In Our Backyards

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By TOM JACKSON

tjackson@tampatrib.com

Published: December 28, 2008

Everybody, it seems, is on board with the concept of encouraging green energy and green jobs. We're riding the Barack Obama bandwagon, which promises to trundle - under some combination of solar, wind and biofuel - down the road to zero emissions, energy independence and a multi-megaton employment explosion.

Just so long as the bandwagon doesn't pass too close or, heaven forbid, overnight in our backyards.

A wind farm on Nantucket Sound meets resistance from prominent Massachusetts residents concerned about the view to the horizon. Mention the permitting process for a nuclear-powered electrical plant and "China Syndrome" shockwaves rock the surrounding nine counties.

Discover that the state Department of Environmental Protection, bound by copious stacks of statutes, is leaning toward approval of a bio-reactor landfill with the potential to serve, with endlessly renewable and nonpolluting methane gas, the electrical demands of Pasco County's eastern third, and Armageddon is at the door.

But that's the direction things seem to be lurching in the case of the landfill permit application filed by Angelo Iafrate, of Angelo's Recycled Materials, for a patch of wilderness southeast of Dade City.

Confined by dictates consulted on by the environmentalist lobby and written by the Legislature, DEP hinted a couple of weeks ago that it was poised to grant the Angelo's permit, and now it seems everyone with a keyboard, a front yard, a voice or a fist to shake wants the rule of law set aside, to be supplanted by malformed conventional wisdom animated by misinformation, rumor, mischaracterization, superstition and prejudice.

We Don't Want To Know

This is understandable. We make garbage, but we aren't proud of it. We bag it, we stow it in cans, we take the cans to the curb. After that, we don't want to know what becomes of it. Burn it, bury it, put it on a train or cast it adrift on a barge. Whatever, just get it away from here.

The last thing we want is for the guys in trucks to haul it just down the street. Right? To a dump?! With seagulls and rats and foul aromas wafting across our Saturday evening barbecues? No thanks.

That, however, is nothing like what the Iafrate family proposes for their property off Enterprise Boulevard. Alas, because garbage disposal prompts reflexive responses, the facts of what Angelo's proposes can scarcely get a hearing in the public square. We prefer to believe the claims of critics.

Pleasant Amazement Ahead

But, briefly: The landfill would begin as a 90-acre pilot program, representing just 10 percent of the property the Iafrates own at the proposed site. It would consist of virtually impenetrable clay-lined cells running from several feet to several yards deep. A second liner made of a tough composite would cover the clay.

The system would include pipes designed to extract leachate - a foul soup of water and decayed garbage - and multiple wells sunk just beyond the borders to monitor groundwater for the first indication of a breach in the linings. Remedies would be in place for a speedy resolution, should such a leak occur, although the history of the several bio-reactor landfills in Florida is that they have not leaked, and are not likely to do so.

A daily covering of topsoil has demonstrated, at other locations, effective against the collecting of vermin and the escape of unpleasant aromas.

In short, the proposed landfill is not your granddaddy's garbage dump. When it finally is operating, having been subjected to a thoroughgoing vetting by county commissioners who will extract conditions favorable to Pasco residents, skeptics will find themselves pleasantly amazed.

This modern-day facility, favored for its environmental friendliness by Nature Coast Sierra Club, will take a staggering number of tons of our waste and safely decompose it into methane captured and piped to a nearby electric-producing plant, all the while relieving pressure on Pasco's air-fouling incinerators. Then, finally, we will delight in being part, however reluctantly, of America's green revolution.

And we will be proud that we didn't allow a popular misapprehension to overrule the thoughtful application of the rule of law.

Tom Jackson can be reached at (813) 948-4219.

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