The vacant lot that became
DMZ community garden
Going to the City Dump today to pick up wood chips for compost and mulch, I noticed a long line of cars waiting to get in. I thought that was strange, since usually there are no cars waiting during the week. As I approached the gate I noticed that the delay was due to a new security system for getting into the city dump. There were now three checkpoint to get into the dump. Signs reported that there was a $15 charge for dumping “construction material” in the dump. Since I was just there to pick up waste, wood chips, I did not have to pay. However, I asked the woman at the second checkpoint what it would cost me if I had brought material to the dump. She said yard waste would not cost me but other material might, depending on what they were.
The city contracts to Waste Management, the largest waste company in the USA to haul away material from the site and to recycle it as possible. Waste Management gets paid to haul away the waste and then gets money from turning some of the waste into useful products, like fertilizer, energy, materials for bottles etc. Since Waste Management gets paid twice on the material I figured the new fee was just another way for the city to tax us, especially the poor who cannot pay someone to haul away material, without saying they are rising our taxes.
But a report on the TV news tonight makes me question the wisdom of this new policy of charging to dump waste in the dump. The news report was on the increased dumping of waste on the thousands of vacant city lots that cover our neighborhoods, especially in low income areas. Contractors and individuals are just dumping waste into these lots, though they have signs saying not to do so. This makes the vacant lots unattractive and dangerous for children in the area. Now the city, if it does not catch the offender, has to pay companies thousands of dollars to clean up just one of these vacant lots.
I am hoping that the city does not charge me for the ‘free wood chips’, I now get from the city dump. I have proposed and seen some small progress in turning the thousands of vacant lots owned by the city into community gardens like what was done with the DMZ community garden. I can see “no dumping” on these vacant lots but “no dumping” without pay at the city seems too costly.
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