PLANNING
FOR SOLID WASTE MANAGEMENT
Symposium
of State and Interstate
Solid Waste Planning Agencies
September 9-11, 1969
St. Louis, Missouri
-------
Symposium
of State and Interstate
Solid Waste Planning Agencies
September 9-11,1969
St. Louis, Missouri
This publication (SW-2p) was edited by Lillian A. Gluckman
U.S. ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY
1971
-------
This is a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Publication.
This publication is also in the Public Health Service numbered series as Public Health
Service Publication No. 2093. Its entry in two government publication series is the result
of a publishing interface reflecting the transfer of the Federal solid waste management
program from the U.S. Public Health Service to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NO. 71-611731
For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office
Washington, D.C. 20402- Price is cents
Stock Number 5502-3307
-------
ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY-A NATIONAL GOAL
THE QUALITY OF OUR ENVIRONMENT can hardly be good if
we let ourselves become inundated by oceans of waste. Yet solid
waste presents us with a problem that is not easy to solve. In
quantity, indestructability, and ugliness, these wastes constitute
an overwhelming burden. In hazards to health, menace to welfare,
and, of course, in sheer expense, they represent a source of
nationwide concern. The problem and its consequences have both
multiplied in size with our increase in population and advance in
urbanization.
To aid our distressed cities and States, the Congress enacted
the Solid Waste Disposal Act of 1965. The first grants became
available to the States for the planning of solid waste manage-
ment programs in June 1966. States have received planning grants
from the Bureau of Solid Waste Management of the Public Health
Service over a period of three years. In September 1969, the
Bureau convened a meeting of the State and regional officials
who have been developing such plans to assess the progress in
planning and implementation of solid waste management pro-
grams. This volume contains the proceedings of that conference.
States that obtained their planning grants in 1967 and 1968
are obviously somewhat ahead of other States that were delayed
in initiating their plans. However, the conference clearly shows
that data have been collected, State plans outlined, and in some
cases legislation enacted and implementation begun. The con-
ference also brought out rather clearly the problems encountered
and the lessons involved for future action.
It is significant that the name of the program and its identity
have changed in the three-year period. The Act of 1965 is known as
the Solid Waste Disposal Act, and the program that administered it
was known as the Solid Wastes Program. Thereafter it was
recognized that "disposal" was not the appropriate word to use,
and the term "solid waste management" came into existence. The
change in name is an important indication of a change in
philosophy. We cannot today merely dispose of wastes—burning
them pollutes the air; throwing them into oceans and rivers pollutes
iii
-------
the water and the shore; dumping them is ugly, unhealthy, and
obviously self-limiting. Our watchword in planning must be manage-
ment, so that wastes are used, reclaimed, recycled, even prevented.
While the name of the program was changing, a new national
consciousness of the urgency of environmental control was
emerging. In late 1970, by order of the President, the environ-
mental programs of many Federal departments were combined in
the Environmental Protection Agency, and Solid Waste Manage-
ment became an Office in that agency.
The goal of environmental quality remains the preeminent con-
sideration. The planning of solid waste management programs to
help achieve that goal is clearly important. Therefore we are present-
ing the report of the planning symposium of September 1969,
retaining the terminology then used. Although we now have a Solid
Waste Management Office of the Environmental Protection Agency
instead of a Bureau of Solid Waste Management of the Department
of Health, Education, and Welfare, the purpose remains the same-
achievement of environmental quality.
-RICHARD D. VAUGHAN
Deputy Assistant Administrator for Solid Waste Management
May 1971
iv
-------
CONTENTS
Planning for Solid Waste Disposal
Richard D. Vaughan
America's Biggest Industry: The Production of Waste
J. Caleb Boggs 5
The Planning Process
Thomas H. Roberts 13
Workshops on Planning for Solid Waste Management 21
Data for Solid Waste Planning: What is Past is Prologue
Leo Weaver 29
Workshops on Data for Solid Waste Planning 37
Intergovernmental Cooperation and Public Involvement in Solid
Waste Management
Patrick Healy 41
Workshops on Intergovernmental Cooperation and
Public Involvement 47
Solid Waste Legislation
Hugh Mields, Jr 51
Workshops on Solid Waste Legislation 61
Implementation of Solid Waste Management Plans
Frank Bowerman 67
Workshops on Implementation of Solid Waste Management
Plans 73
The Light at the End of the Tunnel
H. Lanier Hickman, Jr 77
Symposium Participants 81
Subject Index 89
Author Index 92
-------
PLANNING FOR SOLID WASTE MANAGEMENT
Welcoming Address to the National Symposium
of Planning Agencies
Richard D. Vaughan*
Welcome to the National Symposium of State and Interstate
Solid Waste Planning Agencies. This meeting is an important
landmark. In September 1966, representatives of the solid waste
planning agencies of our States met to discuss the conduct of a
National Survey of Community Solid Waste Practices and to
consider the development of comprehensive solid waste plans. At
that time, our efforts in this field were just beginning, since the
Solid Waste Disposal Act had been passed only a short time
before (Public Law 89-272, October 1965). We can view with
some satisfaction our progress in the brief period of three years,
and we can now chart a course to finish the job.
This meeting includes invited representatives of present and
potential recipients of grants from the Bureau of Solid Waste
Management. There are now 48 political entities—States, terri-
tories, and regions—which have received matching grants and
which are now proceeding with their solid waste planning. This
Symposium, however, includes representatives from 47 of the 50
States, the District of Columbia, the Commonwealth of Puerto
Rico, the territories of Guam and American Samoa, and 4 inter-
state agencies, even though some of these are not yet grant
recipients. Such broad participation is an indication of the far-
reaching significance of the solid waste problem. All the States
recognize the need for planning to meet the problem, whether or
not they have planning grants from the Bureau of Solid Waste
Management.
The role of the Bureau of Solid Waste Management is a direct
outgrowth of the Solid Waste Disposal Act of 1965. Participants
in this Symposium are well aware of the Bureau's function in
encouraging comprehensive solid waste planning through the grant
mechanism, and I need hardly tell you about the problems of
solid waste. The members of this Symposium know about these
*Assistant Surgeon General, Acting Commissioner of Solid Waste Management Office,
U. S. Environmental Protection Agency.
-------
2 Vaughan
problems from first-hand experience. This group is "where the
action is" in the continuing effort to properly manage mounting
solid waste loads.
The purpose of the Symposium is to permit you to share your
experiences with one another and with our staff. At the same
time, we want to share with you some of our ideas, based on
experience.
I am sure we all agree that any activity develops best when it
is well planned. The need for planning is so important that Con-
gress provided in the Solid Waste Disposal Act for matching
grants to State and interstate agencies to encourage them to
develop comprehensive plans for solid waste management. Con-
gress recognized that control of solid wastes is primarily a State
and local responsibility, and that the States need to plan for the
proper management of this responsibility. Because planning is
necessary, the Congress pledged funds for planning as the initial
step in solid waste management.
What is a solid waste plan? How do you go about planning?
How is a plan prepared? What data are necessary? How do you
coordinate your plans with those of other government agencies?
What kind of legislation should the plan call for? How are you
going to see that counties and municipalities conform to the State
plan? What provision needs to be made for updating the plan?
And, most important, how are you going to gain the support of
the people of your State to allow implementation of the plan?
These are some of the points to be discussed in this Sym-
posium. This will be a working meeting in which every participant
will contribute. We have five major fields for exploration: (1) the
planning process; (2) data acquisition; (3) intergovernmental co-
operation and public involvement; (4) legislation; and (5) imple-
mentation of the plan. An authority in each area, a person of
broad experience-not necessarily acquainted with the detailed pro-
cedural concerns of grant operation-will keynote the discussion
of each major topic. They will not talk procedures, but rather
substance. Following each presentation, the Symposium partici-
pants will discuss the topic in small groups.
This Symposium has come none too soon. Most of the States
are in their second or third year of survey and analysis prepara-
tory- to the development of effective plans. It is imperative that
-------
Welcoming Address 3
we understand not only the planning process, but also the ingredi-
ents of a comprehensive solid waste management plan. Because the
Federal program is comparatively new, we have not always been
able to provide the necessary guidance early enough. In this
Symposium, every representative should obtain a better under-
standing of what planning is and what a solid waste management
plan should encompass. Since the delegates here are the working
representatives of their agencies, what is learned here should have
immediate application.
Keynote for our three-day session will be set forth by the
Honorable J. Caleb Boggs who will share with us his views and
knowledge based on his position as ranking minority member of
the Subcommittee on Air and Water of the Senate Public Works
Committee. Our speaker served as Representative-at-large for his
State in the 80th, 81st, and 82nd Congresses. He was twice
elected Governor of Delaware, and served as Chairman of the
National Governors' Conference in 1959. The following year he
was elected President of the Council of State Governments. Since
1960, he has served his State in the U.S. Senate. His vast experi-
ence in State and National government and his particular concern
for the quality of our environment give him special competence in
both planning and legislative implementation. It is with great
pleasure that I present the Honorable J. Caleb Boggs, United States
Senator from the State of Delaware.
-------
AMERICA'S BIGGEST INDUSTRY:
THE PRODUCTION OF WASTE
/. Caleb Boggs*
I am extremely honored to join you today to participate in
this important session to discuss a problem that affects every
American as few other problems affect him—our national trash
pile. The problem of our solid wastes is as crucial as any this
nation faces in the latter third of the twentieth century. You are
the men and women who will create and perfect the systems to
free humanity from the burden of its discards. I see no more
socially beneficial job than protecting and enhancing our environ-
ment—the job you are doing.
In the course of my preparation for this session, I checked the
annual report on public works of a county in my home State of
Delaware. The report discussed the trash collection problem and
came to the conclusion that the mounting piles of rubbish in our
Nation will require that "more and more money and brains will
have to be thrown into trash."
We seem to be following that prescription. Lots of brains are
"going into trash"—the brains of planners, legislators and admini-
strators. More money seems to be "going into trash," too. It
remains to be seen whether we have put in enough brains or
enough money.
I applaud the Bureau of Solid Waste Management for con-
vening this National Symposium of State and Interstate Solid
Waste Planning Agencies. And I must add that I am doubly
delighted to know that my State of Delaware is so ably repre-
sented by Frederick Stiegler, of the State Board of Health.
Perhaps it would be helpful if I should tell you something of
the way in which the Congress looks at our environment and the
kinds of legislation we are discussing in an effort to enhance it.
Such a viewpoint may be helpful to you as you discuss the topics
listed in your programs.
* U.S. Senator from Delaware, Member, Subcommittee on Air and Water, Senate Public
Works Committee.
-------
6 Boggs
I know you are familiar with the statistics on our national
trash pile, but I believe they need to be reiterated regularly to
make us constantly aware of the magnitude of the problem. The
President's Science Advisory Committee found not long ago that
"each year we must dispose of 48 billion cans, 26 billion bottles
and jars, 65 billion metal and plastic caps and crowns, plus more
than half a billion dollars worth of miscellaneous packaging ma-
terial."
Waste is America's number one industry in terms of tonnage,
for we produce far more tons of waste than we produce tons of
steel or tons of cars or tons of any other product.
For each American we annually produce 13 tons of wastes of
one sort or another. Put another way, we annually discard as
unusable approximately 170 times our body weight in used soft-
drink bottles, tailings from mining operations, junk cars, old
newspapers, and other equally solid waste materials. As we grow
more affluent, this tonnage mounts. We buy our soft drinks in
disposable bottles and clothe our infants with throw-away diapers,
adding new burdens to the Nation's disposal problem. We have
become a society of discarders. Our improved technology taps
lower grade ores, which create more waste for each ton of useful
material. This expands our waste production at an almost geo-
metric rate. And our discards pollute the environment as surely as
DDT or auto exhaust.
The humorist, Art Buchwald, has imagined a glorious day
when a spaceship from Venus might land in a desolate area
identified on the Venusian space charts as "Manhattan." As the
travelers from Venus examine the landscape, a professor radios
the news back to his native planet: "We have come to the
conclusion that there is no life on Earth," the professor says.
"For one thing, the Earth's surface in the area of Manhattan is
composed of solid concrete and nothing can grow there. For
another, the atmosphere is filled with carbon monoxide and other
deadly gases, and nobody could possibly breathe this air and
survive."
Norman Cousins, the knowledgeable editor of the Saturday
Review, recently sought to define the major problems con-
fronting mankind. Peace is of course the first problem—the
need for all peoples to get along together. A second problem is
the need for man to control his environment, to preserve the air
-------
Production of Waste 7
he breathes, the water he drinks and the land he lives on so that
he can live and can enjoy living. Mr. Cousins then made what I
consider his major point—a most hopeful point—each of these
problems is man-made, and therefore each must be within the
reach of man's ability to solve.
President Nixon has shown his commitment to the eradication
of environmental pollution through his creation of the cabinet-
level Environmental Quality Council. That commitment to en-
hance our environment permeates the White House. The Presi-
dent's Science Advisor, Dr. Lee A. DuBridge, recently spoke of
the need for the Council to find ways to improve cooperation
between the Federal, State, and local governments for the best
method of disposal of solid waste.
The enormity of this problem is great. The Congress, I believe,
sees a need for action. That is why we in the Senate Public Works
Committee are pressing forward on the proposed Resource Re-
covery Act, which is designed to improve and expand the 1965
Solid Waste Disposal Act. Similar legislation has been introduced
in the House of Representatives.
The Solid Waste Disposal Act of 1965 authorized a research
and development program aimed at providing new technology for
collection and disposal of solid wastes. Grants have been made for
State and interstate planning, interstate cooperation, research,
demonstration, training, and other programs. Results thus far are
promising, but under the 1965 Act no grants have been available
for construction of facilities for disposal. This is in contrast to
the National effort to combat water pollution which has provided
construction grants to the States.
The major thrust of the first solid waste legislation was de-
signed to provide the base for correcting the deficiences in exist-
ing systems and to develop new methods and techniques for
collection and disposal of wastes. With the growing awareness of
the extent of the problem, many of us have come to realize that
simply extending and strengthening current systems will probably
not provide the answer.
As a result, the pending legislation amending the Solid Waste
Disposal Act would provide financial assistance for the construc-
tion of solid waste disposal facilities. It would provide grants for
construction up to 25 percent for individual cities, or 50 percent
for a regional facility. In addition, it would allow the Secretary of
-------
Boggs
Health, Education, and Welfare to increase the grant by half again
as much-to 37Mf percent for individual communities and 75
percent for regional facilities-where projects used new or im-
proved technology.
Also significant is the bill's price tag-about $800,000,000
over five years. I consider that a sign that the Congress intends to
take a major step toward ridding this nation of clutter.
Should this legislation pass, it might, of course, be affected by
President Nixon's announcement on reducing construction pro-
jects. However, I feel confident that the Nixon administration is
committed to environmental programs since the President exemp-
ted from the cutback, projects of "the highest social priority." I
can think of no greater social priority than the protection of the
environment in which we live.
The legislation, as planned, provides the opportunity for cities,
States or regional units to initiate, explore, and test new collec-
tion and disposal techniques. It offers heavy Federal support and
places strong emphasis on a Federal-State-local partnership to
protect and enhance the quality of the environment.
In addition to support for construction, the proposed legisla-
tion would augment the Federal share of planning costs in the
field of solid wastes. The present law provides up to 50 percent
of the costs of surveys of solid waste disposal practices. The
proposed law raises the participation to two-thirds of the cost for
individual municipalities and 75 percent for regional organiza-
tions.
Four days of hearings are scheduled for late September, 1969
with further hearings to take place in the field. Many of you, I
hope, will be able to attend to give us the benefit of your
invaluable guidance and knowledge.
Senator Edmund S. Muskie of Maine, when the new bill was
introduced last April, made an important observation on the
Senate floor: "I do not believe that America can continue
indefinitely to burn, bury, or throw away the solid wastes generated
by its people. There simply are not enough resources, enough land
area, or enough clear air and clear water to permit the mere refine-
ment of existing approaches to solid waste management."
Too little thought, I believe, has centered on just such en-
vironmental issues, the finite supply of materials available in and
-------
Production of Waste 9
on earth. The world supply of nickel, I understand, will be
depleted before the end of this century if the current usage rate
continues. Obviously, more and more nickel-users will have to
turn to alternative metals. Perhaps our five-cent coin may be
known someday as a "steel." Who today is considering what
effect the lack of nickel would have? What other materials are in
this category?
I am convinced a role exists for the Federal Government in
establishing a coordinated materials policy; not to dictate usage of
materials, but to provide inventories of world supplies of materi-
als, assistance in research into alternatives for those materials in
short supply or damaging to the environment, and promotion of
economic methods for recycling discarded products back into the
economy.
We may invent bottles that dissolve when broken, or cans that
degrade. We may be able to devise methods for quick and profita-
ble disposal of cars, instead of piling old autos on dumps to rust
away.
The discovery of more efficient ways to produce materials
that do not persist in the environment following use, might go far
toward reducing the $3.4 billion we spend each year for garbage
collection and disposal in our urban areas.
We must begin to look at the trash heaps of our Nation as
mines, potentially as valuable as the Comstock Lode. A typical
ton of municipal waste contains a third of the heat potential of a
ton of coal. This is just one example of a currently wasted
resource.
The materials problem must be faced from two directions—
from its source, and after it has completed its useful life.
During this session of Congress, I hope to introduce an amend-
ment to the pending Resource Recovery Act (S.2005) to create a
Presidential Commission on Materials Policy. The Commission
would have broad authority to pursue questions of coordination
of materials policy toward a goal of environmental enhancement,
reporting to the Congress its suggestions for action.
This proposed amendment is the outgrowth of two very know-
ledgeable reports on materials policy, a survey published by the
Senate Committee on Public Works in January 1968, and a
second, more detailed report recently released by the same com-
-------
10 Boggs
mittee. The latter, called Toward a National Materials Policy, was
prepared by some of the Nation's most prominent experts in the
materials field. After an intensive examination of the subject, these
experts conclude:
We should insure an adequate supply of all types of
materials needed in appropriate balance for our produc-
tion requirements, both in peace and during national
emergencies; we should husband our resources by ef-
ficient processing techniques and by the use of com-
monly available materials as alternates for materials that
may become short in supply.
Future concerns will involve the ability of the
materials and energy resource base to support national
and world aspirations for economic growth, and the
implications for the economy of periodic changes in the
relative prices of various materials.
We need to develop new materials with novel proper-
ties to satisfy the more stringent demands of advanced
technologies.
Finally, it is of the utmost importance that, from
the initial states of production of materials through
their ultimate use and disposal, we conduct our opera-
tions and activities in such a way as to minimize pollu-
tion of air and water and to avoid despoliation of the
environment, both physical and biological.
Solid wastes were a public problem long before the advent of
our industrialized society. On the coast of Maine, there is a huge
pile of clam shells left beside the Damariscotta River by a tribe
of Indians long ago. Like us, they had no method of disposing of
their no-longer-needed shells, so they threw them on a giant heap.
Today it is a tourist attraction. However, not all wastes are
picturesque.
We may find it difficult to charge admission to view aban-
doned freight cars and refrigerators. George Butcher, director of
the Public Works Department of New Castle County, Delaware,
includes a page of cartoons in a recent report. One cartoon is
headed Collecting refuse will one day carry great prestige and
affluence. The drawing shows a dejected son telling his father that
-------
Production of Waste 11
he has flunked the Department of Sanitation test. Father answers:
"You know what that means, son, Medical School."
The fact is that we are dealing with man's health and his
survival as a civilized being when we tackle the problem of solid
wastes. Man surrounded by piles of garbage is little removed from
man surrounded by an epidemic of plague. Proper health measures
defeated plague. I feel confident that planning and proper measures
can master our solid waste problems as well.
-------
THE PLANNING PROCESS
Thomas H. Roberts*
One thing I do not propose to do is to offer a once-and-for-all,
sure-fire, air-tight definition of planning or—perish the thought—of
comprehensive planning. If the planning profession hasn't been
able to do this after 52 years of concentrated effort, I certainly
will not try to do it in a few minutes.
Instead, I will resort to a very old definition that I learned in
my first year in planning school and one that still fits pretty well
today: "planning is an aid to the decision-making process." Note
the three key words: aid, decision-making, and process.
Let's start with aid. Neither professional planners nor the
general public should fool themselves into thinking that the plan-
ners are the decision-makers. In our society, elected officials are
usually the decision-makers. A planner's recommendation is not
a decision until it has been carried out by someone in authority to
do so. Without follow-through a plan is worse than useless. Decisions
can be made with or without planning; it happens every day. So the
plan is—or should be—only the beginning, and the planner should
try to build into his plans as much likelihood as possible that
they can and will be carried out.
The second key word is decision-making. It really doesn't
matter how exciting or innovative or clever a plan is if it is not
aimed toward the influencing of decisions.
The third key word is process. We live in a changing world.
People change, problems change, technology changes, and social
purposes change. Any plan or program which is static and insensi-
tive to changing times becomes obsolete very quickly.
Seven Planning Trends and What They Mean
Let me summarize seven emerging trends which characterize
the contemporary planning scene and suggest some ways in which
they can influence the relationship between solid waste manage-
ment planning and the overall comprehensive planning process.
* Executive Director, American Institute of Planners.
13
-------
14 Roberts
First of all, planning has "arrived. " Two or three decades ago
planning was considered at best to be naive and at worst to be
downright communistic. Today it is downright mandatory,
whether you are a local government trying to get a Federal grant
or a retail chain store owner trying to capture your share of the
clothing market. This sudden popularity has had many good
effects and at least two bad effects. For one thing, there aren't
enough good planners to go around. And for another, planning
has sometimes been oversold. People are led to believe that
problems will get solved if only they will appropriate more
money to make more plans. Under this theory, the planner is a
professional hand-wringer: if you can't solve a problem at least
you can hire someone to worry about it for you. And if he can't
solve it, at least he can gather more data to describe it to you.
We can be thankful, of course, that planning is more popular
than it used to be. We must be careful, however, not to abuse
this popularity by allowing our plans to be intellectual but irrele-
vant exercises.
Second, comprehensive planning now deals increasingly with
interrelationships between subject areas and less with the internal
details of a given subject. This has become necessary because of
the sheer volume and diversity of subject areas to be dealt with.
Planners have found themselves confronted with the classic
choice: either learning more and more about less and less until
they know everything about nothing, or learning less and less
about more and more until they know nothing about everything.
It is literally impossible for an urban or regional planner to
possess expertise in all of the fields with which he must deal—law,
transportation, government, housing, site design, and so on. How-
ever, he is expected to have a facility for coordinating and
interrelating these fields with one another and for developing
policies, plans, and programs that cut across them.
This is best illustrated by the nature of the oral examination
which an applicant must pass before being admitted to full
membership in the American Institute of Planners. First, he is
asked to discuss and compare various approaches to the total
comprehensive planning process, including land use and physical
environment, transportation systems, human resources, economic
functions, community facilities, and government and finance.
Second, he may select any one of twelve areas of concentration
-------
Planning Process 15
and relate it to the comprehensive planning process. These twelve
areas are: administration for planning and development; compre-
hensive physical planning; resource development; social planning;
transportation planning; urban design; research methodology and
theory; economic planning; environmental sciences planning; re-
newal planning; planning law; and programming and budgeting. A
perspective planner may be an excellent transportation systems
technologist, but if he claims to be a comprehensive planner as
well, he must have a reasonably good awareness of many other
factors, such as government, public finance, and human resources,
so that he can take into account their complicated web of
physical, social, economic, and political interrelationships. In
short, the special contribution that the planner is supposed to
bring to the planning process is not simply a knowledge of one
more subject area, but an ability to build bridges between them.
It is tempting to become impatient with this ever-widening
circle of interrelationships and to want to cut back, to draw a
line, and to say, "I'll do my planning in my backyard, and I
don't want to be slowed down by worrying about some endless
network of interrelationships." But it is this very compartmental-
ized approach to decision-making that has gotten us into a lot of
the messes we are in today. An example from the field we are
now concerned with—solid waste management—is appropriate. We
know that solid waste can be transformed into gaseous waste by
burning it; it can be transformed into liquid waste by grinding it;
or it can remain as a solid material and be transported to
landfills. We certainly do not want to solve a solid waste problem
by creating an air pollution problem, a water pollution problem, a
transportation problem, or a land use environmental problem. So
nowadays, like it or not, we can't do a conscientious job in our
own field unless we worry about the effects that our problem and
solutions will have on the next fellow's problem and solutions. It
is the comprehensive planner's job to help us do this—to help us
develop integrated policies, plans and programs, even though they
may be separately administered.
Third, planning has moved closer to government and has
become more and more and more a part of the public decision-
making process which it is supposed to be advising. Not too long
ago most planning was conducted by advisory boards composed
of appointed citizens. This was done intentionally. Both citizens
-------
15 Roberts
and elected officials felt that plans would have more integrity if
they were kept out of the political decision-making process. The
only trouble was that this integrity was purchased at the price of
irrelevance. We all know what happened to the volumes and
volumes of planning studies and reports that were produced under
this virginal concept. The sheer bulk of unused plans has probably
contributed more to our solid waste disposal problem than any
other single source!
Let's look at one way in which planning and politics have to
work together. In a typical metropolitan area it often turns out
that the solid waste disposal problem is concentrated in one
jurisdiction—the central city, for example—but the means for its
solution is available somewhere else, possibly in a sprawling out-
lying county with lots of open space for sanitary landfill sites.
Local governments, like people, are motivated by self-interest. (A
rural philosopher once pointed out to me that pigs didn't huddle
together to keep each other warm, they huddle together to keep
themselves warm.) Therefore, the outlying county isn't going to
fall all over itself trying to help the central city with its solid
waste problem, even though it is the commuters from the out-
lying county who contribute to the problem. But maybe the
outlying county has a problem on which it needs help from the
central city, freeway access to downtown, for example. At this
point, political bargaining can be quite effective. Reciprocal back-
scratching is a time-honored custom, and the planner must not
overlook its potential in the art of planning.
Fourth, what was largely city planning a few years ago now
occurrs at all levels of government—city, county, state, and
national. This symposium of state, local, and regional officials is
characteristic of the change. Planning at all levels of government
will allow us, if we will let it, to achieve better integration of our
policies, plans, programs, and expenditures.
Fifth, planning has become horizontally intergovernmental.
Planning efforts now span over several cities and counties at a
crack, in the form of metropolitan planning agencies and -regional
councils of local governments. This kind of planning has obvious
limitations as long as the implementation powers rest with the
several individual local governments, but at least it is a start. It
lets us define problems and solutions on a metropolitan area-wide
basis, and it lets us look for ways to create regional implementa-
-------
Planning Process 17
tion programs, or at least coordinate and standardize local imple-
mentation programs. It also provides to higher levels of govern-
ment, such as the State, a handle to work with in enforcing or
coordinating metropolitan area-wide standards or efforts. A
metropolitan council of elected officials, for example, is a useful
place to strike the kind of political bargain I mentioned above.
Sixth, the planning process has gone modern and has adopted
and adapted data processing and systems analysis techniques from
other fields. In turn, many of the analytical and planning tools
now available within other parts of the planning process, particu-
larly urban transportation and land use models, are available for
application to solid waste systems planning.
Finally, planning and planners are a "mixed bag." The plan-
ning field is marked more by diversity than by homogeneity.
Some planners are very practical and some are very theoretical.
Some work within government, some work close to government,
and some work outside of government. Some work at the city
block and neighborhood level, some at the county level, some at
the regional level, and some at state and national levels. Some are
physically-oriented, some socially-oriented, and some economical-
ly-oriented. And I suspect that the solid waste planning and
management problem in all of its many facets cuts right across
and weaves in and out of all of these aspects of the planning
profession and the planning process.
i How Comprehensive Planning Can Help Solid Waste Planning
Established planning firms and planning agencies at all levels
of government can assist the preparation and implementation of
solid waste management plans in at least three ways:
First, they can be a source of organized information and
intelligence about the present and future of the area under study
—its population forecast and geographic distribution; its land use,
transportation, and public facility plans; and its social and eco-
nomic problems and characteristics.
Second, they can help to relate solid waste planning to other
functional planning areas. For example, they can help provide an
inventory of potential landfill sites that offer minimum conflicts
with conservation objectives and other competing land use pro-
posals. They can also recommend optimum routes for hauling,
based on present and future traffic volumes, capacities, and plans.
-------
18 Roberts
Third, they can help tie solid waste and other plans into the
decision-making processes of the governments which they serve.
Five "Don'ts"
Solid waste management planning is now coming into its own,
and the volume and level of planning efforts in this field are
certain to keep increasing. A few signposts can help in avoiding
mistakes that have been made in other functional planning areas.
Here is a list of five "don'ts" which have been gleaned from
comparable planning experience in other fields.
First, don't direct your planning efforts simply toward treat-
ment and disposal. Concern yourselves with the source of the
problem as well—that is, with the policies governing the generation
of solid wastes.
For years, we tried to plan urban highways in response to
expressed or projected vehicular demands, and in many places it
has been a losing battle. We just could not catch up. If anything,
our efforts seem to have induced more demand. For years, house-
hold detergents played havoc with water quality control efforts
until people became concerned enough to stimulate research ef-
forts aimed toward a change in the product.
Similarly, solid waste policies should be concerned about the
costs imposed on society by the proliferation of such things as
nonreturnable bottles and nondegradable containers. Unless you
look for ways to control solid waste at the source—through
effective incentives and restrictions—you just may never catch up!
Second, don't get "data-happy." 1 am sure that there are not
enough data available on which to base perfect solid waste plans.
I am equally sure that there never will be. We planners have been
guilty of gathering, manipulating, and massaging data, because we
were interested, or because data were there, or because we had a
large computer capacity to fill. Clearly, data and data processing
are necessary and useful. But at some point we should move on
to planning and implementation, even though more data could be
gathered and even though we feel somewhat uncomfortable and a
little unready.
Third, don't develop a "modal loyalty." In transportation
planning we have people who swear by freeways but hate rapid
-------
Planning Process 19
transit, and vice versa. In housing planning, we have people who
feel that single-family houses are an unmitigated evil and that
apartments are the salvation of mankind, and vice versa. I suspect
that these loyalties often have Freudian origins and have little to
do with an objective look at the problem and the proper mix of
solutions. These debates are often fueled by the industries and
producers who profit by given modes, and the planner should not
succumb.
Fourth, as I suggested earlier, don't solve the problem assigned
to you by creating a problem for someone else. Try to be
comprehensive and look at the broad range of implications for
land use, for transportation, for conservation and ecological con-
sideration, for the neighboring jurisdictions, and for the impact of
your plans on the poor and disadvantaged.
Fifth, and last, don't re-invent the wheel. Many of the tech-
niques and studies developed by others can be retailored to your
needs, and this can be cheaper, faster, and just as effective as
starting from scratch with a brand new research grant to discover
the Garden of Eden.
If a competent planning agency has developed a reasonably
good population and economic base forecast, examine it objec-
tively and use it for your own purposes. If a transportation
planner has developed a technique for correlating land use and
density categories with trip generation factors, tinker with it a
little and see if it won't produce solid waste generation levels as
well.
Although the subject matter and "tricks of the trade" for
solid waste planning are different from those of other planning
fields, the basic planning process is probably fairly similar in
many respects, including phases of inventory, projection of gen-
eration factors, selection of geographical distributions, analysis
and selection of generation conditions such as changing tech-
nology and consumer preferences, and analysis and choice of
management conditions.
If we don't seek and exploit these parallels, we will be the
ones to suffer because we will put off solving a solvable problem.
As that famous philosopher, Pogo, once said, "We have met the
enemy, and they are us."
-------
WORKSHOPS ON PLANNING
FOR SOLID WASTE MANAGEMENT
In eight concurrent workshops the representatives of 47 States
and eight regions discussed guidelines for planning in solid waste
management. The workshops varied in their approach, some con-
centrating on planning procedures, others on planning problems,
and still others on problems in implementing plans. In general,
the workshop discussions reflected the state of development of
the solid waste management program in the State or region.
What is a Plan?
"Planning is an aid to the decision-making process." This
definition, offered by Thomas H. Roberts in the plenary session,
stimulated discussion on the part of workshop participants. They
agreed that a plan for solid waste management should be a guide
for intended action, showing times and priorities, developed with
a view toward implementation, not as a showpiece or status
report.
Although the workshops were not in complete agreement on
what should and what should not be included in a plan for solid
waste management, they concluded that the plan should generally
include: (1) a statement of the problem, including an analysis of
any data available; (2) the establishment of objectives; (3) an
outline of the methods by which the objectives would be
achieved; (4) a time schedule for achievement of the objectives;
(5) an indication of the scope of legislation required; and (6)
some definition of jurisdictions and responsibilities.
Some workshop participants felt that a plan should be more
inclusive and should provide for some or all of the following: (1)
specific legislative recommendations; (2) an outline of regulations;
(3) requirements for inspection, licensing, and enforcement; (4)
consideration on recruitment and training of personnel; (5) re-
commendations on technical assistance; (6) information on
financing and cost-effectiveness; and (7) provision for public
relations and public information. To the majority of the work-
shop participants, the plan is a guidebook. However, there are
others to whom it is a road map containing specific route indica-
tions.
21
-------
22 Workshops
All the workshops discussed the publication on State planning
distributed by the Bureau of Solid Waste Management of the
Environmental Health Service. Most of the discussants regarded
the guidelines as a useful general pattern, with existing legislation
and community practice affecting the conformity of any one
State's plan with the guidelines. Although some State representa-
tives believe that any plan should be sufficiently detailed to cover
procedures at each jurisdictional level, the majority favor policy
orientation in the State plan, with specifics to be spelled out in
regulations proceeding from the policy statements.
Objectives and Priorities
A plan for solid waste management has as its objectives: (1)
orderly management of solid waste disposal; (2) appropriate legis-
lation; (3) effective public understanding; and (4) technical im-
provement. Priorities vary from State to State, depending on
previous experience and legislation, level of urbanization and
industrialization, extent of public information, and previous
financial support. In one State, licensing is an important ob-
jective; in another, legislation is the major goal; in still others,
better control, increased funding, better management, greater co-
ordination may be the most important considerations.
Planning for specific time schedules (goals to be accomplished
in one, two, five or ten years) depends on the State needs and
the forecasts of future developments. Such details as location and
size of disposal facilities, control mechanisms and personnel re-
quirements should be left to administrative decision.
Problems
Problems in planning merged in discussion with problems of
execution. All eight workshops reported essentially the same basic
problems: (1) The social problem—interpretation and understand-
ing by the public of the nature of the solid waste situation and
the need for solutions, particularly for those solutions recom-
mended by the planning authority; (2) the budgetary problem-
the need for funds to support the establishment of appropriate
facilities; (3) the political problem—local vs. State control, legisla-
-------
On Planning 23
tion vs. regulation, and local jurisdiction vs. area needs; (4) setting
priorities involving immediate as against long-range goals, indus-
trial as against agricultural considerations, eyesores as against
economics; (5) technological problems—the need to do something
vs. lack of appropriate technology or lack of data on which to
base decisions.
Public Understanding. One workshop group stated that 90% of
a good plan for solid waste management consisted of public
relations. Other workshops cited no special percentage figures, but
agreed that lack of public awareness, lack of planning for public
education, and lack of personnel for public information seriously
handicapped the adoption and acceptance of any solid waste plan.
"People do not recognize the problem until it is beyond im-
mediate control." .... "People are concerned with solid waste
collection, but not with solid waste disposal." .... "People do
not understand the nature of the solutions proposed nor the
relationship of these solutions to their own cities and States."
These were typical comments.
Funds. A problem common to every jurisdiction is the fact
that good plans are expensive in land, personnel, and equipment.
Legislatures which recommend plans and programs, but delay in
appropriating funds, may overwhelm local agencies charged with
application and enforcement.
Political factors impeding the operation of a plan were men-
tioned by every participant. Only very recently have States re-
cognized that coordinated action and uniform policy control are
necessary for the implementation of statewide plans. The mere
existance of the plan cannot make the problem go away.
In a single State there may be a wide range in the size and
population of individual counties; there may be wide variation in
local needs and local conditions; there may be disagreement
among courts in different jurisdictions; there may be considerable
variation in local ordinances and local regulations; there may be
variation in the methods of reporting solid waste data; there may
be no established procedure for coordinating different agencies.
These situations present obvious difficulties in the way of arriving
at and implementing a plan for solid waste management.
A State law may approve a disposal site, but a local ordinance
may close it. The State may formulate a plan, but may not have
authority to require compliance. Several agencies within a single
-------
24 Workshops
jurisdiction may have overlapping responsibilities: for example,
health authorities, water and/or air pollution authorities, police
forces, public works departments, conservation and natural re-
sources departments, agriculture and commerce departments.
The consensus of the workshops was that the State plan
should recognize variation in local conditions, that it should
establish the basic acceptable standards below which no locality
should fall, and leave flexibility beyond the minimum to each
locality. Experiences with the reverse pattern, i.e., situations in-
volving separate plans developed by counties and cities, later
incorporated into statewide plans, presented greater difficulties.
Many kinds of jurisdictional problems were discussed. Solid
waste management is not usually a completely local problem, and
cannot usually be handled on a completely local basis. Cities and
their adjacent counties, industrial areas and their rural environs,
wastes generated in one area and disposed of in another—such
problems are common to all State planners. There was general
agreement that the solution to such difficulties required that the
plan be supported through appropriate legislation and coordinated
action.
Priorities and Technology. The problem of priorities is related
to the political problems cited above, since the pressures of
county and municipal governments and the pressures of local
industry affect time schedules and priorities of implementation.
Technology—or the lack thereof—was cited as a planning problem
by only one State.
Specific Situations
Sites. Almost every planner and administrator mentioned site
location as a major planning problem. Any site proposed produces
local opposition. The only answer thus far devised has been the
use of an adequate public information program. Many States have
not considered the land use of completed disposal sites, while
others have not properly prepared the way for the announcement
of new disposal locations.
Rural Situations. Small rural areas have no planning staffs and
need help. Rural collection and transportation must also be con-
sidered in State planning.
-------
On Planning 25
Special Disposal Problems. Planners face many kinds of special
situations, demanding particular types of skill for solution. In-
dustrial wastes are sometimes privately handled, sometimes not.
Present disposal methods for agricultural wastes and anti-burning
laws frequently conflict.
Disasters. In areas where natural catastrophes may occur,
special provision must be made for situations of flood, earth-
quake, hurricane, or tornado. More recently, it has become im-
portant to plan for manmade disasters, such as strikes.
The Seas. Ocean disposal, for example, may and probably will
create interstate disputes. Oil tankers discharging wastes at sea
bring about both interstate and international disputes. If disposal
at sea is beyond State boundaries and jurisdiction, may it be
included in the State plan? No answer seems to be available to
this question at present.
Personnel. For many State planners, the major problem re-
ported was in the field of recruitment and training of personnel.
Guidelines for State Planning
Tentative guidelines for a State plan for solid waste manage-
ment were distributed by the Bureau of Solid Waste Management
to all participants. Comments on the guidelines centered on the
role of the State in relation to local and area management
programs. In all workshops, the majority felt that the State
should establish minimum requirements or standards to be met by
all local and regional governments. The latter, in turn, can imple-
ment or expand the requirements. The planning process cannot
realistically predict all the actual situations in every region, nor
can plans be the same for all States. Geographic, social, political,
industrial and technical resources vary. from State to State and
from region to region.
In most States the planning process is already well advanced
and in some it has been completed. Most States reported legislation
enacted and implementation beginning. In those States which
received the guidelines prior to the completion of planning, the
document proved helpful. There was agreement among the work-
shops that the guidelines were better used as a general guide than
as a specific pattern.
-------
26 Workshops
Conclusions
Three roles were seen for a State plan in solid waste manage-
ment: (1) setting minimum standards for local agencies; (2) pro-
viding a general legislative support document; (3) providing
technical and policy guidelines.
The workshops produced a lengthy list of needs and a short
list of recommendations. Needs include: research in planning and
solid waste management; legislation to permit and encourage co-
operation among agencies and among jurisdictions; improved
public relations; larger budgets; and updating of survey data.
Recommendations included: development of help from govern-
ment and industry in planning for the special situations outlined
above (oil spillage, agricultural wastes, sea disposal); inclusion of
county and municipal governments in the State planning process;
improvement in data on seasonal and geographic variations.
Several officials asked to be informed about grants and activi-
ties in their States, not only those in the field of solid waste
management, but also in related areas. They would also like to be
better informed about new developments in packaging and pro-
cessing, so that these developments could be incorporated in their
planning.
By whatever standard, the most helpful tool in solid waste
planning has been a sound public relations program. Some States
have set up community advisory committees representing the
public. Others have set up coordinating committees among State
agencies (health, parks, roads, pollution control, etc.). From both
types of committees, news releases, public speakers and radio and
television programs have gone out to the general public. These
information activities have been particularly helpful in securing
acceptance of sites for landfills. (Only one area reported no
problem in site selection; that one uses Federal land.) One State
has awarded a contract to a public relations firm to study the
psychology of opposition to landfill sites.
Local objections to landfill sites have been counteracted in
some States by grants. One State requires communities with a
population density of 300 per square mile to provide solid waste
management plans. This has stimulated areawide planning since
the State provides half the funding. Such techniques have proved
-------
On Planning 27
helpful to the planning process, as well as important in imple-
mentation.
The workshop participants were agreed that information from
the Bureau of Solid Waste Management on research results, con-
densed guidelines, exchange of information, and grants from all
Federal Agencies related to environmental problems, would be of
assistance to both planners and operators of solid waste manage-
ment programs.
-------
DATA FOR SOLID WASTE PLANNING:
WHAT IS PAST IS PROLOGUE
Leo Weaver*
NEVER UNDERESTIMATE the importance of previous
experience. "What is past is prologue" is inscribed at the entrance
of the National Archives Building in Washington, D.C. A
Washington taxi driver is said to have "translated" this to mean
"You ain't seen nothin' yet." This phrase aptly describes the
present status of data collection programs in the solid waste
management field.
Recently Finley G. Martin wrote in Engineer that man's total
body of knowledge doubled between 1775 and 1900.l It doubled
again between 1900 and 1950 and again between 1950 and 1958,
and now it is thought to be doubling every five years. Fantastic?
Yes, but because we started with so little, even this phenomenal
rate of knowledge expansion will fail to meet the need for solid
waste management systems. I believe we have more than doubled
our knowledge of solid waste management in the three years since
our meeting in 1966.
Data collection serves a number of worthwhile purposes—and
some not so worthwhile. For a long time the guiding principle was
for each government to seek more-or-less random bits of
information from sister cities or other governmental jurisdictions.
The theory was that if more cities follow Plan I than follow Plan II,
Plan I must be the better plan. The method of obtaining
information was usually a mail query. Typically, questionnaires
were mailed to representative cities by convenient population
groupings to determine what solid waste was collected; how it was
separated; what department was responsible; the number in a
typical collection crew; what was the average wage; whether a task
system was used; what regulations were enforced; when and where
collections were made; and so on. Common questions were on the
cost of collection and disposal for each unit of time and the weight
and volume of collected material.
Recommended definitions of refuse, garbage, and rubbish, and
other forms of solid wastes were contained in the first issue of the
* General Manager, Institute for Solid Wastes, American Public Works Association.
29
-------
30 Weaver
manual Refuse Collection Practice published in 1941 by the
American Public Works Association.2 However, local custom and
definitions imbedded in the legal concrete of local ordinances and
regulations persisted, and one community's "garbage" might be the
same as another community's "mixed refuse," with great variations
possible from city to city, even those using the same terminology.
Only the broadest kind of comparison could be made and then only
with great care. Realistic comparisons could be made with difficulty
even in the simplest areas; for example, are municipal employees
used to collect refuse from households: yes or no? Cost and
quantity data of all types were particularly suspect.
During the late 1950's, the APWA's committee on disposal
prepared the text of the first edition of Municipal Refuse Disposal?
The committee decided that the mail questionnaire would not be
used. In its place was substituted the personal interview by a
technically competent individual obtaining data through visits to
selected cities. The secretary of the committee, under a grant from
the U.S. Public Health Service, obtained information in this way
from 12 cities. He was successful in terms of common definition of
such items as food wastes and rubbish. But this, of course, did not
eliminate estimates and judgments; it only gave some assurance of
realistic estimates and judgments. It did not really seem necessary at
that time to measure the intensity of the odor or the blackness of
the smoke from an open burning dump. We had not yet attained
the level of "how clean is clean" or "how dirty is dirty."
We have much data on community collection systems or the lack
thereof, on burning dumps, incinerators, or landfills without
burning, but we lack almost completely an evaluation of subsystems
and therefore of the total system.
One cannot evaluate without some form of guidelines or criteria.
Early in our consideration must come a goal, after which we can
decide what kind of data we need and the techniques appropriate in
obtaining them. If data are collected to make possible planning,
systems evaluation, and implementation of better and more
economical systems to meet people's needs, then data collection is
definitely worthwhile.
The key words in this statement—planning, systems evaluation,
and implementation—indicate the goals and provide clues to the
kinds of data needed to achieve the goals.
-------
Planning Data 31
We frequently refer to the Solid Waste Disposal Act of 1965 as
the beginning of a new era in the field of solid waste management.
Certainly this Act is the point of departure for data collection,
since it made possible a survey of community solid waste practices.
This survey represents the first comprehensive effort to obtain data
with sufficient coverage and accuracy to permit evaluation of solid
waste management practices on a national basis. We waited a long
time. The first effort toward a national inventory of water and
sewage facilities emanated from the Stream Survey Center in
Cincinnati more than half a century ago.
While we already had sufficient piecemeal data to suspect rather
strongly that there were critical lacks in the thousands of collection
and disposal non-systems across the country, we could not quote
definite numbers with any degree of certainty. A primary goal of
the survey design was therefore to determine the state of the art.
Because of the experience of previous committees, we knew this
could not be done acceptably by mailed questionnaires. Our
conclusion was that an individual survey interview in each area
would be required. However, considering the limited resources
available for the planning at the time, our efforts had to be geared
toward that portion of the problem which affected most
communities most severely: household services and certain
commercial services.
We decided that agricultural, industrial and Federal agency
sources would not be included comprehensively in that phase of the
planning survey insofar as the Federal guidelines were concerned.
Experience in the water pollution program was helpful in this
evaluation. We knew, for example, that 50,000 Federal installations
had been catalogued for sewage disposal purposes in the Federal
agency water pollution control survey. These decisions should be
reevaluated.
A few States have moved ahead in the field of agricultural and
industrial waste management and can provide valuable experience
for the assessment of industrial-agricultural-Federal agency solid
waste management practice and data collection. In suggesting this
reassessment, I am not recommending the expenditure of great
amounts of time on the details of how best to get this type of data
and what data bits are really important to obtain. I am referring to
using data already available to set priorities on the direction of
-------
32 Weaver
planning or to diversify and intensify existing efforts in
community-system-oriented data collection.
Two significant areas remain to be discussed: the first concerns
data requirements for systems design; the second concerns
obtaining the additional data required for action programs.
Data for Systems Design
One of the most important compromises made in the
development of the data base suggested for the State surveys
resulted from a realization that obtaining state-of-the-art
information did not realistically lead to detailed system design
input data. A survey could reasonably ascertain, for example, the
population served and the types of trucks and manpower employed.
Such a survey, however, could not feasibly develop in-depth
evaluation of the system. Such evaluation would haye required
determination of the sizes of trucks, compaction efficiencies,
routings, details of routes served, cataloguing personnel assigned to
the various types of vehicles, and much other detailed data. It is
probable that the surveyed agencies would not have this
information readily available if they had such data at all.
Much has been written about the development of mathematical
models, and work has been carried out in this field at Johns
Hopkins, Northwestern, and North Carolina State Universities. The
fact is, however, that even if successful models are developed, they
cannot be applied without the benefit of locally oriented "k" factor
input. In my opinion, it is time to begin to move ahead on the
development of locally oriented systems design data input. I feel
that such an effort is a legitimate part of the State planning process,
and that the most feasible mechanism is the case-study approach.
Our workshop sessions could profitably consider the implication
of assigning certain planning resources available to the development
of systems design data on a case study basis. If this proves
appropriate, I believe that the Bureau of Solid Waste Management
should initiate a program to develop suggested guidelines for use in
such case studies to facilitate interjurisdictional application of
mathematical models developed for various subsystems in the total
community solid waste management system.
-------
Planning Data 33
Additional Data for Action Programs
It is clearly not our purpose to become perpetual data collectors
or perpetual planners, but to develop additional data in order to
develop action programs. Data collection is not an end in itself.
An illustration may clarify this point. There is an oft-quoted
figure—94 percent—of the number of land disposal sites which fail
to meet sanitary landfill criteria, based on the built-in checks and
balances within the survey form itself.4 This is not appreciably
greater than the subjective evaluation made by the survey reporters.
Some 85 percent of landfills were rated as below satisfactory levels
in the land disposal site investigation report.
Let's accept the fact that most landfills are poor. What are the
reasons? What do we need to do to correct the situation? Is the
problem lack of money? Bad management? Lack of training? Lack
of skilled people? Low salaries? Lack of appreciation? Or is it a
mixture of all or some of these factors? These are the data we must
have if we are to correct the situation. Such data are the basis for
planning and implementation of a remedial program.
The Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations, in its
report Urban and Rural America: Policies for Future Growth,
recommends the creation of a state' land development agency
empowered to undertake large-scale urban and new community
land purchase, assembly, and improvement.5 The commission feels
that such a land development agency with appropriate powers for
acquisition of land offers a promising means of implementing state
and local urban growth policies. They present a draft legislation
based in part on the 1968 act that established the New York State
Urban Development Corporation. The draft act grants powers to
acquire land by negotiation and the exercise of eminent domain, to
arrange for site development, and to construct or contract for
construction, of utilities, streets and other related improvements;
also to hold land for later use, sell, lease or otherwise dispose of
land or rights to private developers or public agencies, and finally to
establish local or regional land development agencies. A regionally
oriented statewide program under such legislation would make
possible enormous advances in solid waste disposal.
Another example is derived from items 15 and 16 of the Public
Health Service community description report used to survey solid
-------
34 Weaver
waste practices.6 The classes of household refuse not collected are
listed, and the frequency with which several types of refuse are
collected is given. Are these policies established simply as a matter
of local prerogative based on tradition, or have they evolved from a
decision on a reasonable cost limit? Can we correlate frequency of
collection with other information, such as the number of dumps in
the county or the amount of roadside litter? Is it worthwhile to
obtain the additional data required for such a comparison? A
knowledgeable person could, based on his own experience, go
through the information in the existing forms and suggest other
areas where fruitful analyses might be made. Some of these might
be:
• Cost versus service reportedly given, leading to cost of desirable
level.
• Correlation between presence or absence of State regulations
and local systems levels, or, said in another way, the need for
State-level criteria from which local standards can be applied.
• The need for financial assistance at the local level (What is the
community getting for its dollars spent, both municipal and
private?).
• Are area-wide approaches doing a better job? Why?
The possibilities in existing data are legion. They challenge us not
only to recognize the need, but also to establish priorities.
The data we now have are sufficient to set forth certain program
guidelines for action. Several States have already done this. Our
workshops today may be able to analyze data included in the
community solid wastes practices report, to assess the adequacy of
the information now available for action programs, and to
determine what additional data are needed to guide the effort.
I consider that the most important function of the workshops is
to set priorities so that whatever data we collect form a useful part
of a projected action program.
-------
Planning Data 35
REFERENCES
1. Martin, F. G. Courses by correspondence. Engineer, 9(3) :19-21, May-June 1968.
2. Committee on Refuse Collection and Disposal, American Public Works Associa-
tion. Refuse collection practice. Chicago, American Public Works Asso-
ciation, 1941. 659. (Current edition: Committee on Solid Wastes, Ameri-
can Public Works Association. Refuse collection practice. 3d ed.
Chicago, Public Administration Service, 1966. 525 p.)
3. Committee on Refuse Disposal, American Public Works Association. Municipal
refuse disposal. Chicago, Public Administration Service, 1961. 506 p.
(Current edition: Institute for Solid Wastes, American Public Works
Association. Municipal refuse disposal. 3d ed. Chicago, Public Adminis-
tration Service, 1970. 538 p.)
4. Proceedings; Third Annual Meeting of the Institute for Solid Wastes, Miami
Beach, Oct. 1968. Chicago, American Public Works Association, p. 24-74.
5. U.S. Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations. Urban and rural
America: policies for future growth; a commission report. Washington,
U.S. Government Printing Office, 1968. 786 p.
6. Muhich, A. J., A. J. Klee, and P. W. Britton. Preliminary data analysis ; 1968
national survey of community solid waste practices. Public Health Serv-
ice Publication No. 1867. Washington, U.S. Government Printing Office,
1968. p. xiii.
-------
WORKSHOPS ON DATA
FOR SOLID WASTE PLANNING
Information is vital for solid waste planning. Without data it is
futile to attempt to forecast needs or set objectives. State solid
waste planning agencies have surveyed the community solid waste
practices in their States, with the three national forms developed by
the Bureau of Solid Waste Management, and have used the data as a
basis for their projections. They have added to these data by
surveys in specific areas and by calling on other State agencies for
necessary background information. All the workshop participants
reported that their survey using the national forms had been of
major assistance, although in certain significant areas (agricultural
wastes, costs, etc.) the survey does not have sufficient coverage.
They have also found that more detailed and precise figures are
needed in regard to land use, population, physiography, and
community practices. Physical factors reported should include top-
ographic features, soil, groundwater, flood areas, oil and coal
deposits, timber, and climate.
In some States the survey has been repeated in order to review
and update findings. However, in most areas a total resurvey has
been found impractical and various sampling methods have been
used instead. Some data gatherers have covered individual regions
intensively, while others have made complete surveys of specific
types of waste. Resurveys are needed where great change has taken
place in a short time, or where the legal picture has changed, or
where special problems occur. Certain kinds of waste (agricultural,
radiological, mining, etc.) have been the subject of such sampling
surveys.
Methods for Resurveying
The workshops were generally in agreement that data should be
updated on a continuing basis. Many channels are used for this
purpose: checking licensed collectors, processors and disposers;
using incinerator operational forms; requiring reports from disposal
facilities; and utilizing data collected by other State agencies. Where
possible, the information is fed into computers for tabulation. Sites
37
-------
38 Workshops
should be surveyed at least once, and preferably twice, a year. In
some States this is done via reports, while others have sanitarians
visit and evaluate. Wherever resurveys have taken place, significant
changes in the figures have been recorded. The survey appears to be
an inaccurate survey.
Sources of Data
Using the information derived by other State agencies has been a
fruitful source of information. The State department of commerce
may list industries and provide information on industrial sites. Air
and water pollution control agencies have relevant data. The health
department has information on hospitals. Geology departments
have information on ground surveys, water levels, and mines.
Agriculture departments have information on agricultural wastes.
The highway department has data on abandoned autos. The
recreation department can report on campsites and parks.
Especially important as sources of information are the
universities, both those within the State and those outside it. They
can provide assistance in making surveys; they often have technical
data in highly specific fields (animal feed lots, costs, economic uses,
research); and they provide access to numerous types of disciplines.
Engineers employed by communities and regional governments,
the U.S. Geological Survey, and State soil conservation bureaus, are
often helpful to data collectors. Permits and applications in various
areas can contain relevant information. Grants to localities for solid
waste management programs can be accompanied by
questionnaires.
One State has predicted its cost of solid waste disposal on the
basis of retail sales and has found high correlation between these
two statistics.
Special Surveys
Special problems vary from State to State and special surveys do
likewise. Serious problems in one state may have merely nuisance
value in another. Junked automobiles, for example, are of great
importance to some, but relatively unimportant to others. A serious
-------
On Data 39
problem requiring special consideration is the disposal of hazardous
wastes, especially radioactive wastes. The workshops also
mentioned hospital wastes, septic tank pumpings, catch-basin
contents, and toxic chemicals as subjects of special surveys.
Industrial wastes were discussed at length, the feeling of the
workshop participants being that surveys of such wastes were best
dealt with by interview and investigation rather than by
questionnaire. The survey should include both qualitative and
quantitative data, composition of waste, flammability, solubility,
and other significant characteristics. For industry, sampling must
cover an entire locality or an entire type.
Surveys of junked cars indicate that this is a growing problem.
Follow-up information is available from registration check and from
highway departments, with junkyard control through permit. Fees
paid for turning in junked autos have not proved successful, since
they presented the junkyard operators with a bonanza and did not
affect the individual owner. Dumping of autos in waters was
generally discouraged. In one area, a portable crusher is used and
has proved helpful.
A new form was proposed by Bureau staff for optional use in
surveys of agricultural and industrial wastes. The workshops
approved the approach and the objective, since lack of data in these
fields has impeded prediction of needs and capacity. However, the
workshops also felt that ambiguities in the questions should be
resolved, as for example, differences between chemical, food, and
liquid wastes; salvageable and salvaged wastes; wastes disposed of by
more than one method; how to include commercial wastes. A
broadside questionnaire approach to this survey was not favored by
all the workshops; a sampling technique was suggested instead.
In every workshop, the need for as much data as possible and for
the constant updating of surveys was emphasized.
-------
INTERGOVERNMENTAL COOPERATION
AND PUBLIC INVOLVEMENT
IN SOLID WASTE MANAGEMENT
Patrick Healy*
Intergovernmental cooperation and public involvement are
crucial in solid waste management. The National Association of
Counties has prepared a series of handsome booklets on solid waste
management containing plenty of material on both
intergovernmental cooperation and public involvement. The
Nation's Cities, a monthly magazine published by the National
League of Cities, devoted its September 1969 issue to the subject of
pollution and included a fine article on solid waste reuse.
I have four basic thoughts to offer on the subject of discussion
today:
1. Solid waste management, like everything else in our urban,
industrial, technological country, is related to almost every other
element in our society.
2. Federal, State, and regional capacities must be greatly
improved to deal cooperatively with our growing mountains of
trash.
3. Despite the activities of State and national agencies, the
problem will remain essentially a local one, and local government
will have to reorder itself, with all the help it can get, to cope with
the problem.
4. The scientists and engineers who are busily and imaginatively
designing new techniques for waste collection, disposal, and reuse
will have to stay in close touch with local officials, who have the
ultimate responsibility to see that the job gets done efficiently and
economically.
The Interrelatedness of Everything
The City and County of Los Angeles, where the people produce
about 750,000 tons of solid waste a month, provide a fine example
* Executive Vice President, National League of Cities.
41
-------
42 Healy
of interrelationships. Since 1957, the law of Los Angeles has
banned backyard burning of solid wastes. The sheriff flies
helicopter patrols to catch people who may be dumping trash
illegally near somebody else's backyard. Moreover, the combined
City-County Health Departments have to employ 200 sanitarians to
check on landfills and transfer stations. And, of course, the county
engineer regulates some landfills. The Los Angeles Regional Water
Quality Control Board has to pass on whether industrial waste
disposal sites conform to specifications. The county treasurer, the
tax collector and the health department are all involved in
supervising private contractors who haul trash away from 59 cities
in Los Angeles county. The business of solid waste management is
the responsibility of at least five departments in both city and
county governments.
Another example of the interrelatedness of everything comes
from a much smaller area. The Bureau of Solid Waste Management
gave a grant to the town of Barrington, Rhode Island to test the
idea of having householders throw rubbish and garbage into kraft
paper sacks which were then dumped at a model sanitary landfill.
The homeowners were enthusiastic about using the kraft bags,
which they found far easier to handle than conventional containers.
Unfortunately, the dogs of Barrington also liked the bags; a hungry
dog can chew through a bag much more easily than through a
garbage can. So now Barrington has a leash law, which it did not
have before.
Improving Capacity
Given the interrelationships inherent in the solid waste problem
and its management, no single level of government can handle it
effectively. Although this is a truism to people sophisticated in the
field, as a nation we are just beginning to understand this
proposition and to forge the necessary interjurisdictional links in
the chain of waste management.
While the collection of waste will remain a local responsibility for
the foreseeable future, disposal and/or reuse can no longer be
accomplished solely by the city that generates the waste. Large
cities do not have the disposal sites, and neither large cities nor
small cities have all the other resources they need, especially the
-------
Intergovernmental Cooperation 43
money. (It costs San Francisco $31 a ton to handle solid waste
these days.)
We need to move vigorously toward area-wide cooperation, and
we need state help, too. The advantages of achieving area-wide
cooperation are evident, but are worth repeating. Area operation
brings about economies of scale; it permits greater flexibility in the
choice of disposal sites; it enhances coordination of air and water
pollution abatement; and it may serve to attract Federal financial
assistance.
Here are some examples of regional cooperation in solid waste
management fostered by councils of governments, as reported by
the National Service to Regional Councils:
The Muscle Shoals Council of Local Governments in northern
Alabama has developed a unique program for refuse disposal in its
area. The Council, unable to raise funds to cover the costs for a
regional study of solid waste disposal practices, recommended that
the studies be carried out on a county level. As a result of the
studies, two programs developed. In Florence a sanitary landfill was
used. In the second case the county and three cities jointly
purchased a tract of land, the major portion of which was used as
an industrial park, with the remainder as sanitary landfill. When the
fill area is complete it will be converted to a recreation park.
In the Richmond, Virginia area, the solid waste program may be
placed under the authority of a park agency, although many legal
and technical complications must be solved first. However, the solid
waste program stands to gain two important advantages: (1) the
power of eminent domain and (2) the power to issue bonds for
revenue. The program would thus be assured of funds and would
not have to depend entirely upon voluntary support.
The Association of Bay Area Governments recently completed a
study of disposal practices in the San Francisco Bay area. In the
report, disposal sites were analyzed, their capacities noted, public
and private programs were broken down as were the costs of
operation. The study laid the foundation for an action program in
the Bay area.
The Statewide Comprehensive Transportation and Land Use
Program of Rhode Island also recently completed a study of waste
disposal. In its report the group recommended an action program,
encompassing all aspects of planning, financing, constructing, and
-------
44 Healy
managing refuse disposal facilities. The group recommended a State
grant-in-aid fund of 40 cents per capita, to be apportioned to
communities for refuse disposal, to encourage high quality service
and joint use of refuse facilities.
In New York the Metropolitan Regional Council has been
investigating the possibilities for intermunicipal solid waste
management. The New York area is also studying the feasibility of
better local monitoring of solid waste processing and establishing
standardized regional waste measures.
In addition to such council actions in specific regions, State
government will have to become more involved in solid waste
disposal. For one thing, only State government can set the
necessary standards and allocate the necessary resources to assure
an orderly, sanitary, and economical solution to the problem. Only
State government can take full account of population growth and
movements, conservation, land-use planning, air and water
pollution, and technological change.
Regrettably, State laws, like local waste management efforts, are
too fragmented in their approach to assure coordinated results.
Such waste management activities as storage, collection,
transportation, processing, and disposal are treated as separate
steps, rather than as part of an integrated process. As recently as
1962, only nine States (California, Connecticut, Kentucky,
Michigan, New Jersey, Ohio, South Carolina, Tennessee, and
Washington) had any provisions for formation of districts to
operate area-wide disposal systems. We need State legislation to
treat the sequential elements in the process as part of a whole
system, rather than as unrelated tasks.
The Federal government, too, has a large stake in the outcome
and must play a major role in assuring that we solve this problem.
The efforts of the Bureau of Solid Waste Management have been a
big step in the right direction, though there are many steps still to
be taken. I particularly welcome Senator Muskie's proposed amend-
ments to the Solid Waste Disposal Act, which would stimulate State
and local area-wide waste management planning within a regional
environmental protection system. The proposed bill would provide
nearly three-quarters of a billion dollars to States and localities over
the next five years to build solid waste disposal facilities and study
-------
Intergovernmental Cooperation 45
ways to recover and reuse salvageable materials that our society no
longer can afford to burn, bury, or dump into the sea.
Finally, the Federal government should adopt tax and regulatory
policies that will encourage—indeed, require—industry to develop
modes of manufacturing and kinds of packaging that will minimize
rather than maximize our solid waste management difficulties. State
governments should do likewise.
Regional, State, and Federal governments must help local
government in the management of waste disposal. The cities cannot
cope with the whole problem, but for the foreseeable future they
will be literally holding the bag—the trash bag. The cities bear the
burden if the local trash pick-up system breaks down. They have to
hire the trashmen or contract for rubbish removal service. They
have to worry about where to put the junk when the landfill is full.
They therefore have to look closely to see whether they are doing
the job as best they can with the resources they have at hand—those
resources are, I know, inadequate.
This brings me back to my first point—the interrelatedness of
everything. I am not sure that our city governments are organizing
themselves to do the job with full understanding of this principle.
As W. C. Button (Chairman of the Maryland National Capital
Planning Commission) suggested at a National League of Cities
annual meeting a few years ago, perhaps our cities should reorganize
their public works departments, sanitation departments, and some
parts of their health and planning departments into a Department
of Waste Management that would bring under one roof a
coordinated approach to the land use, public health, and
environmental protection problems associated with solid waste
collection, processing, transfer, disposal, and recycling.
There certainly are many legal, administrative, political, and,
most of all, financial constraints that will have to be relieved before
our local, State, and Federal governments can undertake the tasks I
have outlined, but I submit that as the public becomes more aware
of the problem it will insist that these constraints be overcome. The
National League of Cities stands ready to do its share to inform the
public of the magnitude and the urgency of the problem we face.
One of the great needs is improvement of communications
between the engineers and scientists who are working on the
technology of waste management, and the public officials who have
the ultimate responsibility for seeing the job through.
-------
46 Healy
As we improve our technological capabilities, we shall, no doubt,
find new ways to gather and get rid of our refuse. Perhaps we shall
have pneumatic tubes, incinerators that do not pollute the air,
maybe a "reverse cornucopia" that will consume a limitless amount
of solid waste, even as our cornucopia-like factories produce an
unending supply of consumer products packaged in bulky and
indestructible containers.
One can envision revolutionary approaches to the collection and
disposal problem. It may not be too far-fetched to expect that,
some day, homes, apartment houses, public buildings, stores, and
factories will have trash-burning systems that will provide them
with usable heat and power without emitting air pollutants. I can
foresee that trash collection might become a two-way system,
carting away non-flammable wastes and delivering packaged
flammables from other sources to feed the household heat-power
generator. And perhaps that pick-up and delivery system could be
used for other purposes too: to deliver mail, newspapers, and milk;
to pick up school children, commuters, and shoppers, and, let us
hope, deliver them home, too.
All this may be too fanciful, but it does suggest that there are
surely going to be more ways than we can now imagine to deal with
our waste problem. City governments are inevitably going to be
directly and deeply affected by the new technology. Those who are
concerned with local planning and those who are concerned with
local governing must share in decisions as technological advances
change our lives.
-------
WORKSHOPS ON INTERGOVERNMENTAL
COOPERATION AND PUBLIC INVOLVEMENT
Every State planning agency, without exception, recognizes that
public relations and public information are vitally important factors
in the success of any planning program for solid waste management.
There is also an awareness of the difference between public
relations and public information; every agency has public relations,
good or bad, but effective public information can help to make
public relations favorable rather than unfavorable.
The workshops which discussed public involvement also
discussed intergovernmental cooperation, dealing with this matter
in two different ways: (1) cooperation among various State agencies
to achieve better solid waste management, avoid friction and secure
relevant information; and (2) cooperation among governments of
different jurisdictions, especially in areas where solid wastes
generated in one area affect other areas. As in the case of public
involvement, there was general agreement that good
intergovernmental relations are desirable, but that such harmony
was extremely difficult to establish.
Intergovernmental Cooperation
Cooperation among Federal Agencies. Programs affecting solid
waste management are included in several Federal agencies and
departments, including Housing and Urban Development,
Transportation, Interior, Defense, as well as Health, Education and
Welfare. The suggestion came from many State representatives that
the Bureau of Solid Waste Management act as a coordinator of
information from Federal sources, as well as a clearinghouse for
information from private and research organizations. Information
on policies and grants from all these sources would be conducive to
better management.
Cooperation among State Agencies. Agencies within a State deal
with health, roads, air pollution, water resources, geology, sanitary
engineering, agriculture, commerce, forestry, recreation, and all of
these have relationships to solid waste management. Federal grants
for many different purposes, ranging from rat control to highways,
may go to different State programs, without necessarily producing
47
-------
48 Workshops
cooperation among these programs. One agency may designate a
disposal site; another may organize its operation; a third may
enforce standards; a fourth may have the power to change location
or methods of operation.
Examples of cooperation or the lack thereof were numerous:
cooperation with the highway department in handling junked autos;
with the forestry department on burning debris; with geologists to
determine optimum landfill sites, safe depths, ground water levels;
with recreation departments for use of completed landfills and for
solution of problems of wastes at public campsites; with urban
renewal and urban planning officials, with natural resources
supervisors, with police and sheriff's offices. The list is long.
Since most agencies fear loss of traditional powers and
independence, cooperation and coordination are not easy to
achieve. Some States schedule regular meetings of department heads
for mutual information, clearance of problems, and combination of
resources. Other States use informal conferences and meetings,
while still others have developed departments of environmental
control in which various forms of pollution control are represented.
In a few cases, the Office of State Planning acts as coordinating
agency. In sum, although there is agreement on the need for
cooperation, no uniformly successful technique has emerged.
Cooperation among Jurisdictions within States. Most States plan
for solid waste management on a county basis. This has occasioned
much difficulty in administration, especially for municipalities.
There is a trend toward development of metropolitan planning
agencies involving regional concepts. A formal council of govern-
ments has been set up in some areas, while in others meetings of
county and city officials are scheduled under State guidance. Local
legislation, local option and local practice vary in an almost infinite
range of patterns of jurisdictional cooperation.
The supervision of the solid waste management program may be
in the hands of health authorities, pollution control authorities, or
natural resource officials. Planning may be in one set of hands,
administration in another, licensing in another. Where State
legislation has been enacted, authority may rest at the State level or
at the county level. Cooperation between State and county officials
has been improved by (1) systems of regular meetings; (2) State
financial assistance to the counties; (3) State licensing and
enforcement programs; and (5) setting of statewide standards.
-------
On Intergovernmental Cooperation 49
The major stumbling block in coordination and
intergovernmental cooperation has been the difficulty of getting
counties and municipalities to work together. Site locations are
usually the problem. Opposition on the part of those adjacent to
proposed disposal sites is vocal and extreme, while support for the
sites is usually lacking. Local problems, particularly those of the
cities, cannot usually be solved within the municipality, and State
involvement is almost inevitable.
Coordinating Groups. Cooperation among State agencies has
been enhanced by formal meetings of pollution control officials
with departments of geology, agriculture, highways, recreation,
commerce, etc. Sometimes a solid waste interagency committee is
established. In some areas, geography may require coordination on
an interstate basis, and a few regional meetings have been held,
usually with Federal assistance.
In the counties, coordinating groups have followed similar
patterns, with the State providing assistance for inter-county or
county-city coordination. An area council representing several
counties and cities can, with State support, provide a more effective
and more economical approach to solid waste management
programs. An exchange of benefits (for example, roads for disposal
sites) may prove mutually advantageous to the areas concerned.
The difficulties in the way of coordinated action range from
constitutional limitations in some States, to financial difficulties in
others, and include public understanding in all.
Public Involvement
Public education and public information on the subject of solid
waste management are vital to the success of any program. There
was unanimous agreement in every workshop that when people
understand the problem and are involved in the planning, they tend
to cooperate with the solutions devised and bring appropriate
pressure to bear on elected and decision-making officials to carry
plans into operation and provide funds for their implementation.
As suggestions for informing the public, the standard
communications mechanisms were recommended: news releases;
television programs; spot announcements on radio and TV; public
meetings; posters; films. Speakers bureaus have been helpful,
-------
SO Workshops
especially in approaches to service and voter organizations. Public
involvement has been handicapped by lack of appropriate materials,
lack of budget, and sometimes by lack of relevance to local
situations.
An effective public relations technique is to get a good operation
started and publicize its effectiveness. Those in opposition to a
program are usually active and vocal while those in support of it are
passive and silent. Since budgets for public relations are meager in
almost every jurisdiction, publications, films and posters from the
Bureau of Solid Waste Management would be appreciated by States
and cities.
There was little discussion of "forming" public opinion, and
much discussion on "informing" the public. Increasing national
awareness, TV coverage, and current interest in ecology have
helped, but it is recognized that changes in public opinion come
slowly. Basic changes come from local approaches to local problems
rather than from general understanding of a global problem.
Advisory Committees
Most states have advisory committees of some type for their solid
waste management programs. Some of these represent government
agencies, while others are representative of the general public. The
experience has been that public cooperation is more readily secured
when local organizations such as the Chamber of Commerce,
League of Women Voters, conservation groups, anti-pollution
groups, etc., form a nucleus of public support for solid waste
programs if they are included in advisory committees.
Another form of advisory committee centers on technical
functions, ranging from planning to operational technology.
Associations of cities, counties, professional groups, management
groups, and industrial groups are all represented in one State or
another. Public involvement is recognized as an important element
in assuring the effectiveness of solid waste management plans. In
spite of this, no pattern has emerged for either a public advisory
interest or a public education program in this field.
-------
SOLID WASTE LEGISLATION
Hugh Mields, Jr. *
State, territorial and interstate solid waste planning agencies
represented at this Symposium have been intimately involved in
collecting and analyzing data, in defining the nature and scope of
solid waste problems and resources for their solution, and in the
development of plans and specific proposals for solid waste
management. However, these efforts may prove to be only an
academic exercise unless this planning for program implementation
is the product of an institutional arrangement that is capable of
making political decisions to act affirmatively over the long run.
By an institutional arrangement able to make political decisions,
I mean more than a cooperative effort on the part of all the
governmental entities in the area—Federal, State, regional, and
local. It will take no less than an unqualified political commitment
on the part of all the relevant governmental bodies to pass the laws,
raise and spend the money, and provide the authority necessary to
actively implement the plans.
As bureaucrats and technicians, you will now be required to use
all your imagination, talent, dedication, and muscle to convince the
political policy-makers and your public constituency of the
necessity for action—action now! The consequences of total
inaction or partial effort will be magnification of the problems.
Only after all the governments having jurisdiction within a solid
waste management region can agree upon the nature of their
environmental problem and the fact that it has regional significance,
can area-wide planning begin to move toward implementation and
productive environmental management. In addition, these
governments must agree on the quality of environment they want
to provide and arrive at a general understanding on the means which
will be required to achieve this condition. These considerations will
intimately involve planners and managers in the political and
legislative process.
We must be concerned with all the levels of government that
affect our environmental mangement program from the activities of
Linton, Mields & Costen, Inc.
51
-------
52 Mields
the Federal government and Congress to those of the State
legislatures, the local councils and the county boards.
We must also be concerned with the environment as a whole. The
interrelated nature of our environmental problems dictates a
sweeping view of environmental legislation and action, including
efforts at prevention, control, and abatement of pollution and plans
for environmental management.
What is the status of our environment? What are the prospects
for environmental legislation which will provide us with the
necessary political solutions and institutional arrangements? Each
day more statistical evidence is introduced to document the
decaying state of our natural resources. Technical studies and
reports indicate the vast complexity and integrated nature of the
problems that must be faced in order to halt the continuing attacks
upon the air, our water, our land, our health, and our welfare. In
addition, environmental assaults are becoming page one topics in
our newspapers and popular magazines, and the subject matter for
nationwide television specials.
Increased public awareness and concern about the quality of the
environment can be seen in the growing editorial treatment
accorded the problems; in the flurry of activity among good
government groups; in the rumblings emanating from corporate
board rooms; and in the rising tone of political comment. Still, in
spite of all this documentation, concern, publicity, and interest, the
nation's environmental quality continues to deteriorate.
Some explanation for the contemporary state of the environment
was offered by the recently released report of the American
Chemical Society, "Cleaning Our Environment." This report,
among other things, points an accusing finger at the failure to make
use of pollution control technology already in existence; at the
failure of Federal, State, and local governments to carry out
legislative remedies already on the books; and at the failure to
commit the money and energy.needed to do the job.
More importantly, we have failed to achieve a national
commitment for environmental quality. On a national level, we
have not yet taken the crucial step necessary to build the
institutional arrangement capable of making the political decisions
necessary to restore our environment.
In his foreword to Edmund Faltermayer's book Redoing
America-A Nationwide Report on How to Make our Cities and
-------
Legislation S3
Suburbs Livable, Charles Abrams makes the statement: "Public
policy is now the most important force in determining whether our
cities will improve or decline, whether our suburbs grow well or
badly, whether our journeys to work will be comfortable or
tedious, whether we breathe good air or bad, whether our slum
neighborhoods will continue to seethe with tensions and violence.
What is needed is a statement of national purpose . . ."
In spite of an increased awareness and a greater concern about
the magnitude of environmental problems, we have yet to hear a
statement of national purpose. We have yet to make a commitment
for environmental quality, a national pledge which proclaims to all
the various segments of our society: "Our air is going to be clean,
our water clear, our land uncontaminated, and our health and our
welfare free from environmental assault." Until our national
purpose is made known and the commitment to quality proclaimed,
our progress toward the solution to the complex, interrelated
multitude of environmental problems will be fitful and sporadic.
Under our system of government, the offering of legislative
programs and proposals at the national level is usually the function
of the executive branch. For the last decade, however, in
environmental legislation the Congress of the United States has
taken the initiative. The Congress, more specifically the Committees
on Public Works of both Houses, has recognized the national scope
and character of environmental decay, and has introduced and
actively prosecuted legislative responses to many of the most
pressing environmental problems. In most cases the executive
branch has followed, belatedly or reluctantly, behind the
Congressional initiative.
State and local efforts to control environmental decay have been
woefully inadequate in most cases. This has been due in large
measure to the overwhelming magnitude of the problems. Despite
the valiant efforts of the State of California and the Los Angeles Air
Pollution Control District, the smog of Los Angeles is too much for
their efforts alone. The failure of State and local governments to
respond to environmental challenges has also been due in part to
the pressure of private interest groups within their jurisdictions. The
threat of an industry to take business, tax base, and payrolls
elsewhere if forced to institute pollution controls is a strong whip
over any State or municipal government.
-------
54 Mields
The Congress, less bound by such pressures, has championed
the idea of environmental quality and has laid the basis of what
may become a national environmental policy. Senator Edmund S.
Muskie of Maine has been a Congressional leader in the pursuit of a
quality environment. As Chairman of the Senate Public Works
Subcommittee on Air and Water Pollution, he has provided
leadership, imagination and drive behind important legislative
efforts.
In the past decade, the Congressional committees have produced
vast amounts of informational and educational material, including
hearings, testimony, and staff reports, which have played a part in
bringing the nature and scope of environmental deterioration to the
attention of press and public.
Congressional hearings have also brought into the public spotlight
some of the shyer elements of our society. There has been some
reluctance to take a public stand when the subject is the proper
responsibility to halt environmental decay. Such reluctance has
characterized vested business interests, State and local officials
concerned about the possible loss of their powers, and passive
Federal agencies opposed to taking an active role in fighting
pollution and contamination, satisfied in restricting their role to
research. While all of these groups have not become converts to the
environmental causes of Congress, the Congressional hearing room
has provided a good forum for public identification of arguments
and points of difference, for the persuasive force of political
compromise, and for the education of the recalcitrant.
And along with the documentation and rhetoric, the Congress
has produced environmental legislation. In the last six years, major
steps to confront specific attacks upon the environment have been
taken with the Clean Air Act of 1963, and its 1965 and 1966
amendments; the Air Quality Act of 1967; the Water Quality Act of
1965; the Clean Water Restoration Act of 1966; and the Solid
Waste Disposal Act of 1965. While these laws have not themselves
enunciated a total national environmental policy and commitment,
they have made probing steps in the required direction and have
fixed into law several important environmental principles and
working policies.
Among the principles which have been incorporated as basic
features of Congressionally initiated environmental legislation is the
idea that although environmental decay is a national problem, the
-------
Legislation 55
responsibility for providing environmental quality must be divided
among all segments of society-public and private, the individual
and the organization. The vast resources of the private sector are
therefore encouraged to apply their technological expertise to the
development of new, better and more economical solutions to
specific environmental problems. State and local governments are
given the responsibility to develop, administer, and enforce
environmental standards as long as they are competent and
responsive to the problem.
Perhaps of most importance is the recognition in this legislation
of the need for comprehensive regional approaches to
environmental problems. In most instances, particularly in
metropolitan areas, local and State jurisdictional boundaries do not
adequately describe the area which is relevant to the control of air
or water pollution or the development of an effective program of
solid waste management.
Almost all of us have been or now are going through the mill of
the problems of multiple jurisdictions—overlapping, intertwining,
oftentimes undermining. While our experience in trying to achieve
city-county consolidations or other kinds of regional government
has been just short of dismal, I am reasonably convinced that the
regional approach is both necessary and ultimately possible.
Councils of governments, which now number close to 100, give us
good reason for hope. Almost all of these councils have been
formed as a result of assistance provided by the Federal government
under Section 701g of the Urban Planning Assistance Program
enacted in 1965. Continued Federal aid and Federal pressure to
require local governments to cooperate in taking a regional
approach to common problems are absolutely essential to the
process.
The most recent example of the determination of the Federal
government to encourage a regional or area-wide approach in
development programs which receive Federal aid is contained in
Section 201 of Title IV of the Intergovernmental Cooperation Act
of 1968. The Bureau of the Budget Circular A-95 initiates a formal
regional and State review procedure for a wide range of Federal aid
programs, including most of the Federal grants in the environmental
field. This review procedure is intended to encourage appropriate
local development programs receiving Federal money to reflect
regional needs and priorities.
-------
56 Mields
Grants of Federal money to local governments for construction
of municipal waste treatment plants has been an important program
addition to the environmental legislation emanating from Congress.
The Public Works Committees recognized that there was a
tremendous need for the construction and improvement of local
municipal waste treatment plants if the quality of our streams and
water was to be improved. The Committees also recognized the
magnitude of the financial commitment necessary to get these
plants built. As a result of the inclusion of this grant program, the
water pollution program was given an initial boost as municipalities
became financially able to initiate much-needed improvements in
their waste treatment facilities. However, as the program has
progressed, there has developed a gap between the Federal aid
authorized in the water pollution legislation to meet the local needs
and the amount actually appropriated. In the last several years, the
gap between needs (authorization) and funding (appropriation) has
widened.
In fiscal year 1969 the authorized amount for water pollution
control was $700 million, but only $214 million was appropriated.
In fiscal year 1970 the authorization is for $1 billion, but the
Administration has again requested only $214 million for the
program. The gap in these two years, therefore, is almost $1.3
billion. As a result, many critically needed water pollution control
programs have been seriously delayed.
The impact which will be felt by pollution control programs if
the Administration's requested funding is accepted, is indicated by
the Executive Director of the Delaware Water and Air Resources
Commission who recently stated that ". . . The appropriation of
$214 million as opposed to the $1 billion authorized will drastically
reduce the efforts of the state (Delaware) to meet the 1972
deadline imposed by the Water Quality Act of 1967 ..."
It appears, however, that a large number of Congressmen and
Senators will attempt to push for full funding of $1 billion, or at
least as much of this amount as can be used effectively this year, a
sum estimated by the Interior Department as $600 million.
Even at a time of heavy anti-inflationary pressures, many
members of Congress seem concerned about keeping the
commitment to local government made in the Clean Water
Restoration Act of 1966 and emphasized by the Water Quality Act.
These legislative measures directed the States to impose water
-------
Legislation 57
quality standards, committed local governments to a timetable of
compliance and included a program of construction grants. As of
March 31, 1969, the Federal Water Pollution Control Agency listed
a backlog of 4,525 waste treatment works projects, requiring an
investment of over $5.1 billion.
Senator Muskie has continued his push for new environmental
efforts by introducing the Resource Recovery Act. This legislation
would take a giant step beyond the Solid Waste Disposal Act of
1965. The 1965 law provided for grants to the States to conduct
surveys of municipal solid waste disposal practices and problems; to
develop comprehensive State plans; and for demonstration projects
to test new methods of disposing of solid wastes.
The Resource Recovery Act would take an innovative approach,
placing heavy emphasis on the recovery, recycling, and reuse of the
component materials in solid waste. The bill authorizes the
Secretary to find recommended incentive programs (such as
favorable tax treatment) to assist in solving the problems of solid
waste disposal; and to investigate current production and packaging
practices. Included in this portion of the bill would be
demonstration projects to test the techniques developed in the
study for recovering useful materials from solid wastes. Grants to
State, interstate, municipal, and intermunicipal agencies to make
surveys and plans, as well as a grant program for the construction of
solid waste disposal facilities, are also recommended.
Great emphasis is placed in this prospective legislation upon
regional planning and the reuse of resources, rather than simple
disposal. Individual planning grants are to be coordinated with
regional planning activities. The Federal share in construction grants
would increase from 25 percent to 50 percent of the project if the
area served includes more than one municipality. Additionally, if
the construction project utilizes new techniques which will act to
reduce the environmental impact of solid waste disposal, the
Federal share would cover 75 percent of the reasonable costs of the
project.
In June 1967, the Task Force on Environmental Health and
Related Problems presented its report, A Strategy for a Livable
Environment to the then Secretary of Health, Education, and
Welfare, John Gardner. The Task Force recommended a grant-in-aid
program for solid waste disposal at the local level by 1973 and
envisioned research into new avenues for waste recycling. Both of
-------
58 Mields
these recommendations are included in Senator Muskie's pending
Resource Recovery Act.
In another portion of the same Linton Task Force Report in
1967, the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare was urged
". . . . as a major step toward meeting the challenge of
environmental protection ... to seek Congressional authorization
to establish a council of Ecological Advisors to provide an overview,
to assess activities in both the public and private sectors affecting
environmental change, and to act in analyzing capacity; to be in a
commanding position to advise on critical environmental
risk-benefit decisions; and finally to be instrumental in the shaping
of national policy on environmental management." I regard that
last admonition—shaping a national policy—as most important.
President Nixon has created by Executive Order an
Environmental Quality Council, composed of the Secretaries of
Agriculture, Commerce, Health, Education, and Welfare, Housing
and Urban Development, Interior, and Transportation. However,
the House Appropriations Committee has denied this Council any
operating funds, criticizing its "patchwork" approach. The Council
has also been faulted because it must, essentially, make judgments
on its own departmental programs.
The idea of a body of environmental advisors in the White House
is, however, still alive. Senator Henry Jackson's bill to create a
three-man Board of Environmental Quality Advisors, to be named
by the President subject to Senate confirmation, passed the Senate
in July 1969. Senator Muskie has incorporated into the omnibus
water pollution bill, a proposal that would create an Office of
Environmental Quality in the Executive Office of the President.
This office would be headed by a Presidential appointee confirmed
by the Senate. The principal advantage of this mechanism is that it
provides for a sufficiently large, competent, and independent staff
unaffiliated with any other Federal agency, and, therefore in a
position to give to the President a thorough, professional review and
analysis on all matters which pertain to the environment. Such new
capability for expert advice should help to make the
Legislative-Executive dialogue on environmental quality more
productive. This office could be capable of helping the President
develop and promote a national policy on the environment. In the
Report of the Senate Committee on Public Works which
accompanied the bill, the Committee stated ". . . The Committee
-------
Legislation 59
and the Congress are pledged to a national policy of enhancement
of environmental quality, a policy based on the concept that man
and his environment are interrelated and that a quality environment
is necessary to the improvement of living standards for all men."
I believe that an unqualified political commitment must be made
in each regional area, on solid waste legislation, air, water, and any
other environmental concern. I would encourage the earliest
expression of national policy in this regard. This national position
requires the technical and intellectual resources of a competent
environmental advisory group to the President. The new legislation
(S.B. 7) contains the features initially required. Technicians,
practitioners, planners, veterans of political battles, and, active
administrators of functional programs of solid waste management,
have a large stake in this bill. I feel certain it will, if enacted, prove a
major factor in improving our ability to deal with problems of
environmental management.
To many, the prospect for environmental control and
environmental enhancement seems rather dim. However, we have
some reason to hope; we have come a long way since 1955 when
Congress first passed an extremely modest air pollution research
program at the request of Senator Kuechel of California.
We now have a reasonable grasp on the nature and scope of our
problems.
We now have laws which provide tools to control, abate, enforce,
and manage.
We now have in large measure the technology that needs to be
applied for solution.
We don't have all the financial resources required, and we don't
have the management, control, and enforcement organizations we
need to effectively implement our existing laws. These are, of
course, deficiencies of no small order, but they can be overcome.
As we proceed, let us take note of President Woodrow Wilson's
counsel that ". . . What really bends the processes of government is
continuous, sustained and intense effort, generally uncertain at the
beginning of what its exact final outcome will be, always responsive
to the situation as it is, and continuously aware of the need to be
on top of that situation, and not of some abstract plan of what it
ought to be, or was when one once knew it, or would be if only the
people in Washington had more sense."
-------
WORKSHOPS ON SOLID WASTE LEGISLATION
All the workshops agreed that State solid waste planning
should precede State legislation. Most of the workshop partici-
pants felt that a State legislative measure was highly desirable if
not essential. As planning progresses, legislative requirements be-
come clear, making it possible for legislative action, when under-
taken, to be completely suitable. Legislation enacted prior to
proper planning usually requires amendment or alteration. How-
ever, because action is urgently needed and because pressures
come from many parts of the community, precipitate legislative
moves may be difficult to avoid. Nevertheless, the need for
planning should be emphasized.
In all the workshops there was consistent support for State
solid waste legislation. The existence of a solid waste act improves
administration of the program and strengthens the position of
solid waste officials. If the question is asked, "Should a State
have a solid waste management act?" the answer of workshop
participants from most of the States would be YES.
What Should the State Act Include
The workshops recommended that State solid waste laws
should set policy and standards, but should leave rules and regula-
tions to be set administratively. The law should include:
Definitions. Uniform definition of terms makes clear the re-
sponsibilities of communities; enhances understanding of the pro-
gram; facilitates smooth relationships to other States and to the
Federal government programs.
Designation of Authority. The act should outline the mecha-
nism of procedure, indicate the groups or individuals in control,
state how these officials should be appointed, and delineate the
structure of State and local machinery.
Responsibility. Areas for State and local responsibility should
be defined. A legislative enactment which is unenforceable or
inapplicable is of little use. Enabling legislation is therefore pre-
ferred to regulatory legislation.
Standards. Some States prefer to leave setting of standards to
the designated authority. Where standards are indicated in the
61
-------
62 Workshops
law, they should be the basics to be expected of all jurisdictions,
permitting more stringent requirements where localities wish to
implement them. A State act should bring together and codify
existing legislation to provide consistency. Guidelines (legislative
or administrative) from the State capital are often of assistance to
county governments, particularly where the political consequences
of local action might be unfavorable.
Certification and Enforcement. A program of enforcement by
enabling rather than directional authority is an important ingredi-
ent of State law. The workshops were agreed that improvement in
waste management is difficult without a legal mechanism for
enforcement. A state agency needs authorization not only to
establish and enforce statewide regulations, but also to enforce
local standards, rules and regulations.
Jurisdictions. The State law should outline areas for imple-
mentation and encourage regional applications. In most States
regional agreements are legally permissible; however, others will
require new legislation or constitutional action to permit the
formation of solid waste regions.
The jurisdiction of the Federal government presents some
problems. Large Federal installations, military bases or Indian
reservations may not conform to State solid waste regulations. On
the other hand, in some States the availability of public land has
been an advantage in providing sites for landfills.
Manpower. Enabling legislation to permit the State solid waste
authority to set manpower standards may be of significant help.
Both counties and municipalities find that appropriate standards
for selection of manpower, training and education of personnel,
and inspection to assure competence make their job easier.
Esthetic Standards. The basis for most State solid waste legis-
lation is health. There is a growing tendency to consider that
esthetic standards should also be embodied in the law as a matter
of principle. Such standards convey broad authority for dealing
with industry, mining, private dumping, junkyards, etc.
Funding. Budgeting for solid waste management at the State
level is crucial, for without funding the legislation becomes mean-
ingless. Budgets may be for the State solid waste program, or may
include technical assistance and grants to localities, and funds for
public relations and public education.
-------
On Legislation 63
Local Authority
When legislation has provided for designation of a State
authority and its range of responsibilities, standards and regula-
tions can be set by the State, leaving operation and administra-
tion of facilities in local hands. Effective control of such opera-
tion might be handled through licensing, inspection, training,
matching grants, and similar devices. The workshops agreed that
collection practices, types of containers, storage areas and details
of operation should not be embodied in law, but should be left
to local jurisdiction.
Administrative Regulations
Minimum acceptable standards should be set by the State, the
workshops agreed almost unanimously, with varying additional
requirements set by the State or locality for communities of
different sizes. With near unanimity, the workshops agreed that
open burning should be prohibited.
With policy set by law, and procedures and standards set by
administrative regulation, the power of regulation may be vested
in appropriate State authority. The ban on open burning, licens-
ing of sites and facilities, conduct of training programs and similar
activities by the State are handled in some areas by departments
of health, in others by departments of natural resources, but
there is a trend toward establishment of a State solid waste
agency, possibly within the department of health.
Licensing may be carried out by the State or by county or
municipality under State standards. In either case the workshops
recommended that licenses be issued on a year-to-year basis.
Revocation of a license may present more problems than non-
renewal.
Compliance with Standards
There was considerable discussion on compliance, ranging from
the use of compliance bonds to the use of public education.
There was general agreement that both the "stick" and the
-------
64 Workshops
"carrot" are necessary. Legislation can be a stimulus to effective
public education, but opinion was divided as to whether it is
feasible to have regulation for solid waste disposal precede com-
munity acceptance. Some observers feel that the regulations are
futile if the community is not ready to accept them, while others
feel that the communities will never be ready if regulations do
not push them toward new attitudes.
Most of the workshops concurred in the concept of legislation
and regulation, with a built-in time lag in enforcement to permit
continuing educational efforts. For communities which may have
difficulty in meeting new standards, lead time may be extended,
but no community should be exempted from established standards.
There was all but total agreement that open burning should be
prohibited, with designated disposal sites to eliminate this prob-
lem. Violators are therefore prosecuted not for open burning of
solid waste, but for failure to operate sites conforming to State
regulations. The workshops considered that open burning could
be phased out over periods of six months to three years, with one
year accepted by the majority as a feasible and practical time
interval. This pattern was arrived at independently in each work-
shop.
The major cause for failure to comply is lack of funds.
Answers to this problem were suggestions for grants or loans from
the Federal or State government. Although there is considerable
difference of opinion on this subject, low interest loans are
apparently favored over outright grants. State involvement in the
allocation of funds assists the State agency in enforcing standards.
Various sources of funds other than general taxation were
suggested by the workshops: a tax or surcharge on products to
provide funds for ultimate disposal of both package and product;
establishment of solid waste management as a public utility with
fees for service regulated by a utility commission, a tax on retail
sales.
In the experience of workshop participants, compliance has
been more effectively achieved through construction grants and
loans, planning assistance and encouragement of regional programs
than through punitive action against violators. The experience of
water pollution agencies was cited as an example of the failure of
punitive action to secure desired results.
-------
On Legislation 65
The Regional Approach
The workshops felt that regional agreements should be encour-
aged, but not compelled, by the States. Solid waste problems can
rarely be solved within a single municipality. Regional programs
may be stimulated by financial aid, demonstration grants, assis-
tance in planning, and by mutual exchange of benefits. They
cannot usually be enforced against the will of local groups.
Reports indicated that most of the States have passed State
Solid Waste legislation, others have such legislation pending, and
regional agreements have been begun or are planned in many States.
-------
IMPLEMENTATION OF SOLID WASTE
MANAGEMENT PLANS
Frank Bowerman*
To "implement" is to "put to work." But in implementing a
solid waste plan, we may start from a premise that may or may
not be true. In many instances, we may assume that we are
starting with a workable plan, but since many plans are not
workable, implementation may not be successful. Many studies
result in a final effort which is not capable of implementation.
We cannot accept as a premise that planning always produces a
program which we can make work.
I think that one of the most satisfying things an engineer can
do is to implement a plan. To make a study, then to see that
study come into being by way of a report—that is a good
experience. But when the report sits on a shelf and gathers
dust—that is really discouraging. However, to have something
created by way of an idea, to generate a plan that becomes a
workable, viable operation is truly exciting.
I think one of the finest things that ever happened to me was
to be given a broad responsibility in Los Angeles County, starting
with the development of basic legislation, going on to studies,
buying land, starting landfills, designing and constructing transfer
stations, and seeing good programs evolve. It did not happen
overnight. I started in 1949 on the basic plan for solid waste
disposal in Los Angeles County, and it was not until 1956 that
the plan was in operation.
A workable plan must incorporate the use of definitive and
practical technologies. I have heard people talk about the use of
nuclear energy, for example, as a method of disposing of solid
wastes. Such a technique may become a practical certainty; solid
wastes may not have to be burned or buried but may just be
vaporized. However, the technology for that to become feasible is
probably decades away. It is not a workable plan for today. Laser
energy is another proposal—taking a beam of light, flashing it on
a tin can, and-poof-causing it to disappear! That is not yet a
* Group Vice-President, Land PoUution Control, Zurn Industries.
67
-------
68 Bowerman
workable technology. We cannot put to work plans for which a
technology is not certain.
However, I will mention two technologies now being de-
veloped which appear to have possibilities, although they may not
pay off quite as immediately as one might hope. One is dense
compaction. This technique has been used for about ten years in
Japan and for three to five years in the United States, but it has
not been applied on a large enough scale to give us a final
determination of maintenance costs. We do not yet know whether
this is a dependable day-in and day-out method. A solid waste
disposal system has to cope with a "stream" that is never shut
off. The tonnages keep coming in and the system has to be able
to operate whether the machines are working or not. I look on
dense compaction technology as still in the developmental stage.
"Rail haul" is another important new technology, depending
largely upon dense compaction. It is manifestly easier to haul
"coal" instead of "feathers." Therefore, dense compaction can
make a rail disposal system practical and workable. The- system
must be designed around a specific responsible operator, a govern-
mental authority, a private contractor, or a mixture of the two.
A good many sound technical plans remain on the shelves as
"unworkable" because the question, "who is to do what?" has
not been resolved. Bickering and lighting in the division of re-
sponsibilities has thwarted the implementation of many programs.
In my opinion, it is the responsibility of the planner to define the
responsibilities and spell out the division.
The system, to be workable, must also be compatible with the
technical capability of those who are going to operate it. Many
incinerators that probably could have been operated without
pollution of the atmosphere became serious air polluters because
of poor operation. Operation is often a more difficult problem
than design. Even with the finest control technology, poor opera-
tion would still make the stack discharge totally unacceptable.
Again, the study plan should indicate the level of competence
required to operate the programs. More is involved than accepting
any personnel that may be available.
Much credit is due the Public Health Service for offering
training programs in a number of fields: sanitary landfilling,
incinerator operation, and solid waste management system design.
-------
Implementation of Plans 69
An engineer working in the sanitary field with water and air
pollution problems cannot become a solid waste expert overnight.
This is an area of specialty that requires a certain degree of
understanding, and the Public Health Service training programs
are an excellent means of producing such understanding. Many
communities seem to assume that to make the transition from an
open burning dump to a sanitary landfill all that is needed is to
hire a new engineer. However, the big pieces of equipment used
at landfills are not easily handled, and lack of knowledge can be
dangerous and even fatal. At several landfills, men operating
bulldozers have been killed through failure to recognize that part
of the refuse was hard and unyielding, causing one track to
remain high while the other falls into a soft spot. The bulldozer
rolls over on the operator, crushing him. The system must be
planned to include the training of people to make them capable
of safely operating equipment under new and varying conditions.
It is also necessary to face the fact that the plan must be
politically sound. Engineers do not like the word "politics," but
politics, in the highest and best sense of the word, is a necessary
and vital aspect of implementation of a solid waste management
program. The elected official and his professional staff attempt,
to the best of their ability, to translate the needs and desires of
the community into workable operations. The engineer who
thinks he is smarter than the politicians, that he can develop a
system without considering its effect on people and their habits,
is going to fail. The system, if it is to be sound, must be
acceptable to the politicians. A plan compatible with sound en-
gineering and popular appeal will be successful. The political
leaders may even be convinced by the engineer that they gave the
engineers and planners the idea in the first place.
From experiences in a number of cities, I have found that
people from many walks of life do have ideas that can be
incorporated into solid waste planning. Often the ideas are good
and lead to an exchange of thinking. The consulting expert often
puts together a system that comes from the framework of local
thought. This is good engineering.
For example, a solid waste planner in an area with a severe air
pollution problem would be in trouble if he tried to implement
an incinerator program. The situation may change, but at this
time selling incinerators in certain areas of the U.S. would be
-------
70 Bower man
difficult. A program designed to implement that kind of an
operation might be doomed beforehand.
In an area where the only suitable landfill sites are those that
have natural beauty, such as meadowlands or natural game re-
serves, the conservationists may defeat landfill plans. From an
environmental point of view, some sites are more important as
they stand. San Francisco Bay is a good example. The Bay Area
Conservation and Development Commission has simply placed a
"Stop Order" on all filling of the Bay. The decision has nothing
to do with the economics of waste management, but is concerned
simply with preserving San Francisco Bay for posterity. A pro-
posed system that did not recognize such a basic factor would be
a useless system.
On the other hand, the possibilities for implementation of a
solid waste management plan can be enhanced if we take advan-
tage of the things that people and politicians like and then build
toward them. For example, in Los Angeles, good support was
obtained from the Regional Planning Commission and from the
Department of Parks and Recreation for landfills that were de-
signed to become part of the park system. So they were designed
that way. We never had to convince Los Angelenos of the desira-
bility of landfills. We sold five "parks." In considering the politi-
cal ramifications of a plan, consideration should go first of all to
those aspects that are for the general good.
The engineer can develop political support for a solid waste
management program; this should be part of the implementation
action. The political decision-makers are vital to the implementa-
tion of a program. At least once every three months during a
study program formal presentations should be made to the top
political decision-makers and their staff. This can often be com-
bined with public meetings. The political leaders are thereby kept
informed and they help the public to understand what is to be
done through the solid waste management study. Through charts,
graphs, and visual materials, the experts can interpret the plans,
so that the final report will not be a surprise. Government
leaders, like the rest of us, do not always appreciate surprises.
They like to be included in the planning so that they can
understand what is being done and be prepared to act on it.
In addition to quarterly review meetings, it is helpful to
contact the decision-makers individually at any critical decision
-------
Implementation of Plans 71
point. If a planner is contemplating a county-wide anti-burning
law, he cannot feasibly recommend such an action until he has
the support of people who will have to carry out the mandate
and take the criticism of the ban on open burning.
Timing may be important. Perhaps a ban on open burning
might be acceptable at a later time, possibly after an educational
campaign or in a period when an election campaign is not pend-
ing. Understanding of the goal is important, but an elected
official must also consider how a decision will affect him.
In addition to informing the elected officials, the solid waste
planner must also inform the public works director, the city
engineer, and the public health officials. There is also a need to
go to the public directly—preferably before the fact rather than
after the fact. If word of a landfill in a particular area is rumored,
it will be too late to generate public support for the idea. By that
time the local population will have generated an opinion which
will harden like concrete. The vote of organized people at that
point may well defeat the plan.
Since landfills, incinerators and transfer stations always have
to be located somewhere, it is a good idea to find out beforehand
the key people in the neighborhood. The really key people are
usually just a handful. At most, 200 to 300 people in any
neighborhood are really interested enough to take a position for
or against any proposal. If the plan is clearly and honestly
presented to organized neighborhood groups and their leaders,
support is usually forthcoming. If they are asked to permit a
presentation to their group, they will often be quite willing. I
would say that probably 90 percent of the general public will
listen, while 10 percent already have their minds made up. Of the
people who listen, about 75 percent will agree if the argument is
reasonable. Groups can be addressed at the local high school or
civic club; people then become involved and the groups have an
impact in favor instead of against the program.
Most people think solid waste management is important. We
should take advantage of this fact. Nationwide television programs
have helped. There is a strong new interest in the techniques of
solid waste management. Positive information can displace rumors
and can provide a stimulus to effective public action. Newspapers,
television, and radio are all alert to the problems of solid waste
management. If they are given material of interest to readers and
-------
7 2 Bower man
listeners, they will want to know more, and will probably give
more attention than expected. They are usually fair in their
reporting and effective in interpretation.
The final stage of implementation comes when a workable
plan has been developed, when it has been accepted by the
political decision-makers, the professional staff, the people of the
local area and the general public. Implementation requires build-
ing something. It may be a landfill, where roads must be con-
structed, fencing installed, water and fire protection facilities set
up and equipment purchased, or an incinerator. But something
else is necessary before one can consider a plan implemented.
The job of the solid waste professional includes a blueprint for
proper environmental protection. A study which merely states
that a transfer station should be built at a particular location is
incomplete. Depending on the selected location, the plan should
state whether or not the station should be enclosed or open;
whether it is to be a direct dump or have mechanical equipment.
People want to know more than just the fact that there is going
to be a transfer station at that site. They want to know what it's
going to look like, what it is going to sound like, where the
trucks will go, what the problems will be, etc. These considera-
tions should be a part of any workable plan.
Sometimes in the construction of an incinerator or a com-
posting plant, an important phase is left out. This is the phase of
"checking out" or "debugging." It is important to retain at the
functioning operation the professional who was involved in con-
structing the equipment so that he can follow the operation
through. Checking out or debugging the equipment is essential.
The effectiveness of implementation of a solid waste manage-
ment plan is finally in the hands of the people on the job, from
the supervisors to those who are charged with the responsibility
for running the equipment. If they can be inspired with a feeling
of confidence; if they can believe they are "not just garbage
collectors," if they can have good training programs, if they can
be adequately paid, the entire solid waste management system
will work.
"With a little bit of luck" and a liberal application of good
judgment, this may all come to pass.
-------
WORKSHOPS ON IMPLEMENTATION
OF SOLID WASTE MANAGEMENT PLANS
What is Implementation?
Implementation is the process of activating recommendations.
Most of the States have collected data on solid wastes and are
well into the planning stage. Some States have enacted legislation
for solid waste management. Very few have progressed to state-
wide implementation programs. The workshop participants were
agreed that planning should provide for priorities based on needs
so that implementation can proceed in orderly fashion. Two basic
prerequisites were expressed: authorizing legislation and adequate
public relations. Legislation enables the plan to be carried out;
public relations makes it possible to do so effectively.
Some States favor county solid waste programs coordinated
into an overall State plan. Most States, however, regard State
planning and State legislation as sources for county direction. All
were agreed that implementation cannot wait for planning to be
completed, and that planning cannot stop when implementation
has been begun. Both steps continue, planning being modified in
the light of experience and implementation changing with new
forecasts and developing technology.
Since the success or failure of any plan is realized when it is
put into operation, the ingredients for operation must be present
if success is to be the result: staff, equipment, funds and author-
ity. Without these, the best-planned legislation will fail.
Implementation and State Law
Most of the workshops agreed that legislative adoption of a
State plan is the vital step in implementation. State legislation
should include a statement of objectives; authority for setting
standards; designation of a responsible management; provision for
public relations, research, technical assistance, certification and
inspection; and budgeting for these purposes. Such legislation has
already been enacted in some States and is pending in others. In
many cases, however, implementation of specific aspects of the
State solid waste plan have proceeded in advance of legislation
under other types of enabling authority.
73
-------
74 Workshops
No nationwide pattern of practice emerged from the work-
shops. Many different kinds of State activities were described,
some prevalent in many areas, some in very few. A sampling of
State functions in the field of solid waste management includes
the following:
1. Encouragement is given to counties, localities and munici-
palities to develop local and regional plans.
2. Technical assistance is afforded to counties in handling
solid waste management problems.
3. Standards have been set for sanitary landfills and require-
ments have been established for treatment of leachate.
4. Controls have been set on open burning, extending in some
States to agricultural wastes.
5. Training programs have been offered for operators and
demonstration programs have been arranged by equipment manu-
facturers and successful site operators. Other training efforts have
been made through assignment of personnel to courses offered by
the Public Health Service and by universities.
6. Certification and licensure have been required for sites and
operators.
7. Regular meetings of State and/or county personnel are
held.
8. Sites are inspected and standards enforced, sometimes by
police, sometimes by sanitarians, sometimes by volunteers.
9. Grants are provided for construction of facilities, for trial
operation or for demonstration projects.
It should be emphasized that all of these measures of imple-
mentation were mentioned in the workshops, but no State has all
of these. One workshop discussed direct State ownership of facili-
ties and another discussed the formation of a State-controlled
non-profit corporation for solid waste management, but these
were mentioned as possibilities not as actualities.
Local Implementation
Solid waste disposal has traditionally been a local responsi-
bility. It is only in very recent years that ecological problems
-------
On Implementation 75
have received wider attention, involving Federal and State in-
terest.
The difficulties in local implementation as reported to the
workshops were: (1) authority boundary lines; (2) lack of public
understanding; (3) unavailability of consulting engineering firms in
some localities; (4) the tendency of consultants to recommend
incinerators, on which profits are greater than in landfill opera-
tion; and (5) the credibility (or lack thereof) of equipment
salesmen.
Because of the nature of the solid waste problem, implementa-
tion cannot stop while planning is going on. As a result the plan
must encompass existing programs and can serve to improve and
develop such programs even during the planning process. Problems
are manifold—money, personnel, site location, public relations,
the presence of Federal installations, community zoning boards,
the ownership of land, the conflict of jurisdictions, and the
nature of specific wastes. In spite of such problems, and in spite
of the view of some workshop participants that counties should
be urged to hold up implementation until State action had been
effected, the overwhelming majority of the discussants felt that
such delay was impossible.
Local plans must provide for alternative service in emergencies,
whether these result from natural disasters such as floods and
earthquakes, or from manmade situations, such as strikes.
Some practical public relations devices were suggested to im-
prove popular understanding and to speed implementation of
programs: counting flies at dumps; picturing the ugliness of exist-
ing methods; reporting accidents and deaths; and emphasizing
health hazards of dumping.
Even after the problem is recognized and the solutions de-
veloped, however, support for a system of solid waste disposal
may run into serious budget problems. Local taxes are already
burdensome and a taxpayers' revolt in many parts of the country
makes addition to these taxes a virtual impossibility. The work-
shops suggested financing through fees for service, public utility
management, taxes on retail sales, and similar devices as substi-
tutes for property taxes.
The feeling of all the workshops was that solid waste manage-
ment is technically feasible, and that implementation of solid
-------
Workshops
waste plans is more likely to be impeded by public misunder-
standing than by technological inadequacy. One workshop
summed up its views in Abraham Lincoln's words:
"Public sentiment is everything. With public senti-
ment nothing can fail; without it nothing can succeed.
Consequently, he who molds public sentiment goes
deeper than he who enacts statutes or pronounces
decisions."
-------
THE LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL
H. Lanier Hickman, Jr. *
There are always inherent dangers in summarizing a meeting:
there is a tendency towards sentimental partiality to one's pro-
gram and one's colleagues; there is a tendency to avoid objective
summation and analysis in favor of pats on the back and approval
all around. The stage for this meeting in September 1969 was set
in September 1966 when we first met to discuss solid waste
planning. At that time, few of us knew what we were doing or
what we were going to do. Today we know our purpose and our
direction, but some of us still do not really know what we are
doing or what we are going to do.
Senator Boggs' keynote comments about the great solid waste
industry were most pertinent. His review of legislative plans con-
tains important implications. The bills now pending in Congress
will have far-reaching effects on current solid waste management
and will shape the direction of the future.
Mr. Roberts discussed the basics of the planning process. His
listing of "don'ts" is worth repeating: (1) don't overlook any
aspect of solid waste management: (2) don't get data happy; (3)
don't keep a closed mind; (4) don't forget interrelationships; and
(5) don't reinvent the wheel.
During the workshop sessions following Mr. Roberts' presenta-
tion on planning, different groups tried to relate the discussion of
planning to the do's and don'ts. Some groups concentrated on
problems of planning while others concentrated on problems of
solid wastes. It was difficult for the participants to discuss the
planning process objectively because of their varying experiences
and the stages of plans in their States. The Bureau of Solid Waste
Management has provided a guide to planning, to stimulate (not
direct) the planning in each area. The planning process is an aid to
decisions-making and not a panacea for all our problems.
*Director, Division of Technical Operations, Solid Waste Management Office, Environ-
mental Protection Agency.
77
-------
78 Hickman
Mr. Weaver set the stage for a discussion on the data needed
for solid waste planning. He stressed the broadening of our data
base by studies of those aspects of solid waste management not
covered during the first national survey. He pointed out the need
of data for systems design, which the national survey did not
provide. I submit to you that the development of systems design
data is not necessary to effectively plan a State solid waste
management program.
In the workshops there was no consensus on how much data
collecting is enough. This confusion probably arises because we
fail to remember what the data are being collected for. A State
solid waste management program must deal with the broad prob-
lems and cannot usually develop operating systems for specific
areas. Although in certain cases precise surveys may be useful, we
should not normally be developing action program data at the
State level.
Mr. Healy described the interrelationships of government and
solid waste management, emphasizing the roles of each level of
government and the need for cooperation. Division of responsibili-
ties simplifies the problem of data collection and the development
of solid waste management plans.
The workshop sessions on intergovernmental cooperation in-
dicated clearly that cooperation with other agencies is not at a
commendably high level. It is discouraging that some solid waste
management officials have not yet established a formal interface
with other agencies and particularly with the official planning
agencies of State government. The major point to arise out of this
session was the need for strong public involvement in the prob-
lems of solid waste mangement. Active, aggressive, and innovative
programs are needed to elicit public interest and support. Al-
though some agencies are doing good work in this area, much
more needs to be done.
The session on planning progress contained several points of
interest. Too many agencies are trying to collect too much de-
tailed information. Although each agency can best judge what it
needs, it is important to remember that we are trying to define
the problem and develop a plan to solve the problem. Precise design
figures are not necessary.
-------
Conclusion 79
Few of the agencies which have received drafts of our plan-
ning guidelines have studied them. It is not necessary to follow
the guidelines precisely, but they do indicate the depth needed in
a plan. Essentially a plan should be designed to serve the needs of
the State. The concept of regional systems is the keystone to
effective management programs and we must constantly press this
concept.
Strong public information programs are an essential element in
both the planning and the implementation phases of solid waste
management.
Additional information on industrial and agricultural solid
waste is needed to supplement the existing data. However, except
in a few areas, a management plan may be developed on the basis
of the national survey, with further information added later.
National survey data are adequate in most instances to develop a
plan. What is required is the imagination to look at it. Stop trying
to keep refining it. In any activity minor faults can be used as
excuses to delay the development of a plan. In spite of these
points, the job can be done and we are making progress. We must
not slacken our efforts just when we are nearing the completion
of plans in many agencies.
Mr. Mields discussed the relationships of legislation and solid
waste management. Something more than mere cooperation is
needed to get the job done. Strong laws and consistent enforce-
ment are essential to effect adequate solid waste management
programs. In the workshop sessions the variation in solid waste
legislation was discussed. Some agencies now have broad enabling
legislation that will allow implementation of their plans, while
other agencies have no legislative basis for being in the solid waste
business and rely on executive favor. A good basic solid waste
management act is needed if programs are to progress.
Mr. Bowerman described what it takes to implement a plan. It
is significant that the implementation of a State plan is not
greatly different from the implementation of a local plan. The
same knowledge, preparation and action are required. In the
workshop sessions many people expressed their doubts about
being able to implement the plans they have been working on.
However I think the doubters underestimate themselves and the
people of their States. Implementing plans begins, like the longest
-------
80 H ickman
journey, with a single step. It is important to start, to take that
first step, and then proceed with each item in the plan.
Three years ago in September 1966 the Bureau of Solid Waste
Management started the States in developing plans. Although at
times that aid and assistance may not have been totally effective,
every State has received some planning assistance. It is time for
the other end of the bargain to be completed and for the States
to develop and complete the plans so desperately needed. The
plans are vitally needed so that the next steps in solving our solid
waste problems can be taken. Implementation cannot proceed
without planning.
This Symposium has given us an assessment in how far plan-
ning has progressed, where the problems are, and what can be
done to implement our solid waste management plans. Although
there is some reluctance to saying how long the job will take, it is
clear to all of us that we have begun it well and can see the way
toward its completion. We see the light at the end of the tunnel.
-------
SYMPOSIUM PARTICIPANTS
STATE AND INTERSTATE REPRESENTATIVES
Alabama
Alaska
Arizona
CHIPLEY, Alfred S.
Department of Public Health
HONEYCUTT, Jack
Department of Public Health
ANDEREGG, James A.
Department of Public Health
BECK, John H.
Division of Environmental Health
Arkansas
FITZGERALD, Sidney S.
Pollution Control Commission
California
Colorado
Connecticut
Delaware
HENDRIX, Arthur C.
Pollution Control Commission
BURGH, Lawrence A.
Department of Public Health
ROGERS, Peter A.
Department of Public Health
GAHR, William H.
Department of Health
STODDARD, Orville F.
Department of Health
KURKER, Charles
Department of Health
STIEGLER, Fred, Jr.
Board of Health
WESTERMAN, Robert R.
Board of Health
81
-------
Symposium Participants
Florida
Georgia
Hawaii
Idaho
Illinois
Indiana
Iowa
Kansas
Kentucky
BAKER, Ralph H., Jr.
Board of Health
DRUSE, Ben
Board of Health
ROBERTS, Clyde
Department of Public Health
TAYLOR, John
Department of Public Health
YOUNG, Reginald H. F.
Department of Health
ZANE, George Y.
Department of Health
JANKOWSKI, Jerome E.
Department of Health
OLSON, Robert P.
Department of Health
DOMINICK, Harvey
Department of Public Health
KOCHER, Raymond
Board of Health
CLEMENS, Jack
Department of Health
LINN, Charles H.
Department of Health
SHULL, Ivan F.
Department of Health
HOLLAND, William D.
Department of Health
82
-------
Symposium Participants
Louisiana
Maine
Maryland
Massachusetts
Michigan
Minnesota
Missouri
JOHNSON, Samuel N., Jr.
Department of Health
HEALY, Gerald, Jr.
Department of Health
fflNCKLEY, Wallace W.
Department of Health and Welfare
TIBBETTS, Earle W.
Department of Health and Welfare
GROZINGER, Fred
Department of Health
SHIELDS, Wilfred H., Jr.
Department of Health
COLLINS, John C.
Department of Public Health
KARAIAN, Vartkes K.
Department of Public Health
HADFIELD, Richard L.
Department of Public Health
KELLOW, Fred B.
Department of Public Health
BADALICH, John P.
Pollution Control Agency
FORSBERG, Floyd J.
Pollution Control Agency
FREDERICKSON, Ralph H.
Department of Public Health and Welfare
ROBINSON, Robert M.
Department of Public Health and Welfare
83
-------
Symposium Participants
Montana
Nebraska
Nevada
New Hampshire
New Jersey
New Mexico
New York
North Carolina
North Dakota
BRINCK, Caliborne W.
Department of Health
CARMODY, Terrence D.
Department of Health
JOHNSTON, Hugh
Department of Health
WILLIAMS, James
Department of Health and Welfare
BUMFORD, Forrest
Department of Health and Welfare
MURPHY, James J.
Department of Health
PRICE, Arthur W.
Department of Health
DAVALOS, Samuel P.
Health and Social Services Department
MOYNIHAN, Terrence
Health and Social Services Department
RAYMOND, Allan E.
Department of Health
WILKIE, William G.
Department of Health
STRICKLAND, Odell W.
Board of Health
USRY, Sidney H.
Board of Health
CHRISTIANSON, Gene A.
Department of Health
84
-------
Symposium Participants
Ohio
Oklahoma
Oregon
LOBB, Everett
Department of Health
DAY, Donald E.
Department of Health
BALL, Orville
Department of Health
GROSECLOSE, Herman
Department of Health
BAILEY, Bruce B.
Board of Health
Pennsylvania
Rhode Island
South Carolina
Tennessee
Texas
CULHAM, William B.
Board of Health
BUCCIARELLI, William
Department of Health
ERICKSON, Richard
Department of Health
QUINN, John S.
Department of Health
DICKERT, H. K.
Board of Health
GIBSON, Robert H.
Board of Health
BOOTH, David
Department of Public Health
TIESLER, J. Tom
Department of Public Health
COCHRAN, David M.
Department of Health
85
-------
Symposium Participants
Utah
Virginia
Washington
West Virginia
Wisconsin
Wyoming
FLEMMING, Robert
Texas Water Quality Board
HOUSTON, David L.
Department of Health
HURST, Howard M.
Department of Health and Welfare
SHIELDS, Ellis R.
State Division of Health
DORER, Ralph D.
Virginia Health Department
JAMES, William
Virginia Health Department
JENSEN, Emil C.
Department of Health
MYKLEBUST, Roy J.
Department of Health
LYONS, O. R.
Department of Health
McCALL, Robert G.
Department of Health
DORCH, Ralph D.
Department of Natural Resources
WELLS, Avery
Department of Natural Resources
GROSS, Kenneth A.
Natural Resources Board
HUMPHREY, George D.
Natural Resources Board
86
-------
BUREAU OF SOLID WASTE MANAGEMENT STAFF
ANDERSON, Earl J.
Boston
BRIDGES, James S.
Cincinnati
GRIFFIN, Robert J., Jr.
Rockville
HAMPEL, Charles R.
Cincinnati
CARRUTH, Dennis E.
Cincinnati
HELMS, Billy P.
Cincinnati
CLEVELAND, Elmer G.
Atlanta
HICKMAN, H. Lanier, Jr.
Rockville
CONNOLLY, Hugh H.
Rockville
HUEBNER, Dennis
Cincinnati
CRANE, Larry E.
Cincinnati
JONES, Thomas C.
Cincinnati
CUMMINGS, Russell E.
New York
JORDAN, Jacquelyn S.
Rockville
CURRY, James C.
Cincinnati
DEHN, William T.
Cincinnati
KEHR, William Q.
Chicago
KELLER, Daniel J.
Cincinnati
DEMARCO, Jack
Cincinnati
LONERGAN, Richard P.
Cincinnati
EBERHARD, Karen S.
Denver
FLAHERTY, Judith A.
Cincinnati
GAZDA, Lawrence P.
San Francisco
LOVELL, Leander B.
Cincinnati
MARCELENO, Troy
Cincinnati
MORRIS, Grover L.
Dallas
87
-------
Symposium Participants
MUHICH, Anton J.
Cincinnati
NICHAMIN, Lesley O.
Cincinnati
NICHOLS, Marsha A.
Cincinnati
REID, Billy
Cincinnati
STOLL, Bernard J., Jr.
Charlottesville
STUMP, Patricia L.
Cincinnati
STURGESS, Judy
Kansas City
SWAVELY, Daniel D.
Cincinnati
RHODA, Richard E.
Rockville
RITTER, Donna L.
Rockville
RUF, John
Jacksonville
SHIEL, Daniel J.
Cincinnati
TALTY, John T.
Denver
TOFTNER, Richard O.
Cincinnati
TOWNLEY, Donald A.
Kansas City
TUCKER, Morris G.
Cincinnati
SMITH, Milbourn L.
Cincinnati
VAUGHAN, Richard D.
Rockville
STENBURG, Merry L.
Cincinnati
WILLIAMSON, Bobby
Boston
88
-------
SUBJECT INDEX
Agencies, in solid waste
management, 51, 52
interrelationships, 42, 43
44, 47, 48, 78
State, for pollution control,
48,49
urban, in solid waste
management, 42
Agriculture, solid wastes in, 39
Automobiles, junked, 38, 39
Burning, ban on, 64, 71
Cities, agencies of, in solid
waste management, 42
environmental role, 53
solid waste management,
16,41,74,75
waste treatment plants, 56
Compaction, in solid waste
disposal, 68
Data, collection of, 78
for systems analysis, 32
function, 29, 37
methods of collection, 37
planning and, 17, 18
procedures, 29, 30, 31
Data, for solid waste manage-
ment planning, 29-39, 78
needs for, 79
sources of, 38
Disasters, solid waste planning
and,25
Environment, control of, tech-
nology, 59
government role, 53
grants for, 56, 57
legislation, 5—9, 52—55
national policy, 58, 59
protection, i, ii, 72
public attitudes, 52, 53, 59
regional approach, 55
role of cities, 53
role of States, 53
Environmental health, task
force, 57, 58
Environment quality, council,
58
landfill and, 70
responsibility for, 55
Facilities, construction grants
for, 56
for solid waste disposal, 44,
74
Funding, for solid waste dis-
posal, 62-64
sources of, 64
Government, interrelation-
ships, 78
Grants, for environmental
programs, 56, 57
for facility construction, 56
for planning, 1
for solid waste manage-
ment, 64, 74
for water pollution control,
56
Guidelines, for solid waste
management planning, 25,
77,79
Incinerators, operation of, 68
Industry, solid wastes in, 39
Land, acquisition for landfill,
33
development agency, 33
Landfill, environmental
quality and, 70
land acquisition, 33
operation, 69
parks and, 70
problems, 33
sites for, 24, 26, 33, 71
89
-------
Legislation, administration of,
61
compliance with, 64
environmental, 5—9, 52—55
jurisdictional problems, 55
on solid waste, 1, 7, 8,
51-65, 79
planning and, 61
public relations and, 71, 72
State, 73
Oceans, solid waste disposal
in, 25
Parks, landfill and, 70
Planners, function, 15, 17
Planning, 13-20
areas of specialization, 15
data for, 17, 18,78
decision-making and, 13
definition, 13, 21
"don'ts," 18
economics, 23
government interrelation-
ships, 78
grants for, 1
guidelines for, 22, 77, 79
implementation of, 67-76,
79
technology and, 67, 68
in solid waste management,
15-19,21
progress, 77
information on, 70, 71
j urisdictional factors and,
23,24
legislation and, 61
objectives, 22
political factors, 23
priorities, 22
problems, 19
regional, 16, 51, 57
reports on, 70
State role, 22
systems analysis and, 17, 78
technology and, 69
trends, 13
Pollution, control of, grants
for, 56
State control agencies, 48,
49
Public, attitude toward
environment, 52, 53, 59
Public relations, in solid waste
management, 23, 47—50,
71,72,75,78
legislation and, 71, 72
Railroads, use of, for solid
waste disposal, 68
Resource Recovery Act, 57,
58
Resources, salvage of, 9
Sanitary landfill. See Landfill.
Sites, for landfill, 26, 71
for solid waste disposal, 24,
33,49
State inspection of, 74
Solid waste, collection prac-
tices, 33, 34
definitions, 30
disposal, Act, 1, 7, 56, 57
compaction in, 68
costs, 7,8,42,43
facilities for, 44, 74
funding, 62, 64, 75
in ocean, 25
land development agency
and,33
national legislation, 1, 7,
56,57
natural disasters and, 25
regional planning for,
43-45
sites for, 24, 26, 49, 71
special problems, 25, 49
State guidelines for, 34
90
-------
surveys of, 37, 43, 79
tax policies, 45
technology, 24
use of railroads for, 68
handling, 46
incineration of, 68, 69
legislation on, 1, 7, 8
management, administra-
tion, 61
agency interrelationships,
42, 44, 47, 48, 50, 78
data collection for,
29-39, 78
grants for, 64, 74
guidelines for, 25, 77
intergovernmental co-
operation in, 41—50
legislation, 51-65, 79
operating needs, 73
plan implementation,
67-76, 79
planning, 15—19
public relations and, 23,
47-50,71,72,75,78
regional planning, 51
role of cities, 16, 41,
74-75
role of government
agencies, 51, 52
role of States, 16,26,41,
50,61-65,74
State advisory com-
mittees for, 50
State legislation and,
61-65
systems design in, 78
training programs, 68—69
urban agencies, 42
planning, economics and,
23
objectives, 22
State role, 22
quantity, 6
surveys, 31
treatment plants, 56
States, agency coordinating
committees, 26, 78
environmental role, 50, 53
legislation, 61-65, 73
pollution control agencies,
48,49
role in solid waste planning,
22
solid waste legislation,
61-65, 73
solid waste management
and, 16, 26, 34, 41, 47, 48,
74,79
Surveys, frequency, 37, 38
on solid waste, 37, 79
special problems, 38, 39
techniques, 29—31
Systems analysis, planning
and, 17, 78
data for, 32
Tax policies, in solid waste dis-
posal, 45
Technology, for environ-
mental control, 59
in refuse handling, 46
in solid waste management,
24
plan implementation and,
67,68
planning and, 69
Training, in solid waste
management, 68, 69
Wastes, agricultural, 39
automotive, 38, 39
industrial, 39
Water pollution, control of,
31,56
91
-------
AUTHOR INDEX
Boggs, J. Caleb 5
Bowerman, Frank 67
Healy, Patrick 41
Hickman, H. Lanier, Jr 77
Mields, Hugh, Jr 51
Roberts, Thomas H 13
Vaughan, Richard D i, 1
Weaver, Leo 29
yo337
92
------- |