OPINION:
Residents don’t need more landfill traffic
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Published: Saturday, June 28, 2014 at 6:00 p.m.
Last Modified: Friday, June 27, 2014 at 6:50 p.m.
It’s not surprising that the Tuscaloosa County Commission didn’t
immediately make a decision with regard to allowing Eagle Bluff Landfill
in Holt to triple the amount of debris that it’s taking in. Competing
interests make the decision a very difficult one.
The owners say demand for
the landfill’s services jumped dramatically with the April 2011
tornadoes. That’s not surprising given the amount of destruction
throughout the city. Once all of that debris is scooped up and loaded
into the back of a dump truck, it has to go somewhere. But it is
surprising that more than three years after the storms, the demand
hasn’t subsided.
All
construction creates debris, and there is plenty of construction
underway in Tuscaloosa County. Much of it is only tangentially related
to the storms now, as most of the clearing and replacement are complete.
Construction continues in some of the area where the tornado struck,
but it’s also going on elsewhere.
The
boom in student housing may have more to do with current demand for
landfill space than tornado cleanup. How much longer that boom will
continue, we can’t say. But we doubt that landfill space will be the
determining factor.
Landfills
really don’t belong in the middle of residential neighborhoods. If Holt
was within an incorporated municipality, Eagle Bluff probably wouldn’t
be there. That’s one of the paradoxes of unincorporated urbanized areas.
However,
the landfill is located in a residential area and has been for more
than two decades. The people living near it aren’t asking the County
Commission to close the landfill, just to maintain the current cap of
1,000 cubic yards a day.
Most of the problems arise
more from the traffic to the landfill than from the landfill itself. As
the owners point out, this is a construction debris landfill, not one
for household garbage. For the most part, it isn’t creating foul odors
or attracting vermin.
However,
the trucks loaded with debris do create problems with mud and dust.
It’s difficult to drive on and off construction sites without getting
muddy. That’s just the nature of construction.
And
some of what the trucks carry creates dust as well. Trucks tracking mud
and dirt onto small, residential streets is bound to create dust
problems for residents.
Residents
would likely look more favorably on the landfill capacity expansion if
the trucks loaded with debris weren’t rumbling down their neighborhood
streets. We can’t argue with trucks using Crescent Ridge Road, a major
thoroughfare. But the neighborhood streets accessing the landfill aren’t
really appropriate for truck traffic.
The
owners say there isn’t a way to build alternative access to the
landfill. Given that, it would seem unwise to increase the amount of
debris the landfill can accept daily and thus, the number of trucks
carrying it through residential streets.
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