The public debate is unlikely to provide a coherent presentation of the skeptics' viewpoint. If your argument is that the proponents have not made a sufficient case for proceeding and that critical data and analyses are missing, you are a poor candidate to be a panelist at a forum. In newspaper stories, questions that receive non-answers typically are not included because of the journalistic paradigm.
Normally, by this stage in the decision-making process, you should be able to discount the skeptics: Some are opponents masquerading as skeptics to spread FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt), while others are people who have not done their "homework." One of the troubling aspects of this issue is that people who enter with an open mind quickly become skeptics, and then become increasingly skeptical as they do more and more homework.
I have not done enough homework to even faintly qualify as an expert
on this issue.
However, in listening to multiple presentations,
there are persistent non-answers to what seem to be basic questions.
While occasional non-answers are to be expected -
for example, when the presenter misunderstands the question being asked -
this is far beyond that.
Background
This is a complex, multi-faceted issue,
and even a minimal background would be quite lengthy.
I will provide relevant snatches of that information as needed.
For more detail, see this topic on the
Palo Alto Neighborhood's website
.
The ESC is a euphemism for an industrial operation that would process recyclables and garbage (wastes), with the actual disposal occurring at the Kirby Canyon landfill in San Jose. The ESC would be built in the corner of the City's landfill near the current recycling drop-off center. It is necessarily a tall building:
The decision on the ESC is being driven not by an immediate need for this facility, but the need to reserve space for it. If the area is used for landfill - as it is scheduled to be - it will be too unstable for a building the size of the ESC.
The City's landfill is nearing capacity, and is scheduled to become
a City park (Byxbee) -
one closed section has already been converted to parkland.
The Proponents
The proposal for the ESC is coming from the City's Public Works Department, headed by Glenn Roberts. The resident who is the most visible proponent is Walt Hays, who has a long distinguished history of promoting recycling programs and related activities.
In recent presentations and forums (this is written in late August), Walt Hays' enthusiasm has focused on a visitor center that the proposed project could make possible. At a forum sponsored by the League of Women Voters (8/17), he said ""Where school children from all over the area can come to see how Palo Alto is a leader in sustainability." and "People come from miles around to admire ..."
Palo Alto has a history as a leader in recycling, but recycling has progressed to such a stage where it is unclear to me whether a city the size of Palo Alto should, or even can, take a leading role. Because this project has such a long time scale - major portions will not be started for a decade - the proponents cannot be expected to provide specifics.
There is a second group of proponents that has much lower public visibility. They are motivated by the philosophy that every city should be responsible for handling its own refuse, otherwise the impacts are too easy to ignore.
The official "vision" for the ESC (Council presentation of 8/2) is:
The residents who are the most visible opponents are Emily Renzel and Enid Pearson. They were leaders in the heroic fight in the 1960's and 1970's to preserve the city's parks (there were multiple attempts to usurp various parks for a wide range of development).
Their perspective and presentations have been heavily influenced by this experience. However, these concerns are not entirely "ancient history." When Terman Middle School reopened, the School District made a series of escalating demands on Terman Park resources. There was a very visible disdain for other users of the park - their uses of the park were dismissed as unimportant and they were characterized as selfish and as obstructionist for pushing to explore alternatives to better share the park's very limited resources. The District was not called to account for what would seem to be basic failures in planning. The cynic might claim that this was a deliberate strategy to create a crisis that would ensure that they got what they wanted.
My intuition is that the controversy over how to handle the situation in Rinconada Park where the School District "mistakenly" installed portable classroom just over the park boundary (July 2004) was a reverberation of the Terman battle - some people didn't want to give the District another "pass" for sloppy work and perceived arrogant behavior.
Adding to the nervousness about protecting parkland is that
there is a significant segment of the community that sees
organized youth athletics (for example, soccer)
as the primary purpose of parks.
A report by the Parks and Recreation Commission recommended
considering converting portions of various neighborhood parks
to playing fields.
My sense is that this is unlikely to happen -
it has been little mentioned since
and copies of the report are very difficult to obtain.
ESC and the SMaRT Station
The Sunnyvale Material Recovery and Transfer (SMaRT) Station
is a joint venture of Sunnyvale, Mountain View and Palo Alto,
and
the ESC would be a Palo Alto-only replacement
when this facility reaches the end of its useful life.
The facility is located in Sunnyvale because they volunteered to host it,
but also because their population is slightly more than half of the total.
An obvious question is "Why doesn't Palo Alto want to continue with this cooperation?" No claims of problems in the relationship have been presented. The predominant answer has been that in a partnership Palo Alto would not have the freedom to pursue innovative programs. But this leaves unanswered why the proponents expect the other cities to unreasonably resist improvements.
I was part of a group that visited the SMaRT station. My overwhelming impression was how much overhead there was to the actual processing of the wastes. First, there was a 20-acre buffer around the facility. Then, there was a fair amount of storage inside the facility: most waste is picked up in a relatively short time during the day, but the processing of it is spread over 24 hours to make efficient use of the machinery. As recyclables are recovered, there need to be large bins to hold them until a full truckload can be accumulated (a large tractor trailer). Finally, the roadways to support the garbage trucks and other machinery are non-trivial.
There are benefits of scale:
In listening to presentations this summer,
I didn't get a sense that these tradeoffs had been carefully considered.
Curbside Recycling
There are a great many variations of curbside recycling,
and the decision on which is best gets more complicated
the more you explore it (no surprise).
The basic tradeoff is cost of collection vs.
the value of what is collected.
For example, office paper has a much higher value than newspaper,
but typically only office complexes
have enough volume to justify handling them separately.
Palo Alto has decided to go with "single-stream" recycling - all the recyclables (except compost) goes into a single cart. An extended trial of this program has been conducted in a variety of Palo Alto neighborhoods (one collection route per day). This is a highly controversial decision. Many other cities facing the same decision decided to go with a "dual-stream" system, where paper is one stream and everything else (cans, bottles, plastics, ...) is the other. With dual-stream, there can be either a cart for each stream or a single, divided cart. In a study done in 2002 for the city of St. Paul (on the web site), significant cost advantages were found for dual-stream.
Single-stream recyclables have a lower value per ton because of contamination, higher costs to separate, and wastage. Contamination: Foodstuffs from the cans and bottles get onto the paper before and after pickup. Also glass broken during transport can get embedded in the paper. Wastage: some of the materials may be too contaminated to be saleable or may be too difficult to sort out - they go to the landfill (entailing an additional disposal fee).
Level of participation in curbside recycling is also a very important factor. State law mandates that local governments work to reduce the amounts going into landfills. Materials recycled not only do not incur landfill fees, but also allow local governments to achieve their waste reduction targets without resorting to more expensive measures to divert or to reduce wastes. Studies have shown that replacing crates or bins with carts improve participation noticeably, but the difference between single-stream and dual-stream appears to be insignificant.
When Palo Alto officials are asked why they chose single-stream, the response has been that the survey of the residents in the trial area showed a very high level of satisfaction with single-stream recycling. I regard this as a non-answer: What they are asking is largely the difference between the set of crates and a single cart (see the St. Paul study). Residents were not told of the lower value of the recyclables and hence it was not a factor in their response.
Be aware that technology seems to be moving quickly in this area, so next-generation sorting machines may change the relative tradeoffs. However, as a technologist (computers), I long ago learned to be highly skeptical of advances being either as effective or as near-term as projected.
The SMaRT station (of which Palo Alto is a partner) handles dual-stream. Palo Alto's curbside recycling is handled by PASCO which is owned by Waste Management Inc (WMI). WMI is shifting to single-stream, and currently has processing (sorting) facilities in Oakland and Castroville. The implication of WMI's position is ambiguous. They are a for-profit company, so they want to maximize the revenue from their share of processing recyclables, so single-stream could be the best choice for their bottom line, but not from a total-cost perspective. However, recycling is an emotional issue in many cities, and if WMI were trying to foist off a decidedly inferior solution, they could risk losing those accounts.
Complication: Palo Alto is in the process of acquiring equipment for single-stream recycling (carts and garbage trucks) - it has been ordered but not yet delivered. This means that Palo Alto's recyclables will have to go to WMI facilities (Oakland or Castroville) until the ESC, or similar facility, is built. The kindly interpretation is that this decision was made assuming that the ESC would be built; the unkindly interpretation is that this was a maneuver to try to force the decision to build the ESC.
Warning: if you decide to research this yourself,
do not try to combine costs from different studies:
The value of the various classes of recyclables can vary dramatically
over time and in different regions of the country.
Other Recycling
There are a variety of other recycling activities,
such as recycling of construction materials and hazardous wastes
and a drop-off center for household recyclables.
These would unquestionably be simpler and cheaper in coordination
with the ESC (in Palo Alto) rather than the SMaRT station.
For example, recyclables from the drop-off center and from curbside
pickup could trivially be combined into a shipment.
However, the proponents of the ESC claim that these activities would
become inordinately difficult and expensive without the ESC,
but seemingly simple questions about this
are brushed off with non-answers.
Waste Diversion
The "R" in SMaRT station is for "Recovery."
About 20% of the incoming waste is diverted away from the landfill.
From my visit, most of this seems to be compostables and wood,
but there are significant amounts of recyclable materials in the garbage.
Some of these are things that should have been put in curbside recycling,
but they were also pulling out items
not included among the curbside recyclables.
When you evaluate participation levels for different curbside recycling,
be aware that small differences may not matter
because this diversion effort may be able to pick up much of that difference.
Comparing Apples to Oranges
The biggest frustration in listening to the various presentations
is that the numbers presented are not comparable.
For example, when the question arose about using the SMaRT station
and having a Recycling Drop-off Center in Palo Alto,
the response by City staff presumes that the charges for sorting
commingled recyclables from curbside pickup
would be applied to these already sorted recyclables.
In another example, when they compared the ESC to other options,
they use the revenues from the curbside recycling with crates,
rather than adjust for the change to single-stream.
This is a dramatic difference: from $70/ton to $15-20/ton.
Normally, the analytical case for a proposal is developed by city staff,
working with consultants.
However, because of continuing problems with the analysis,
the City Auditor Sharon Erickson
has tasked to assemble and analyze the numbers.
This report is expected in mid-November.
Value of Parkland
Both the proponents and the opponents have weak presentations
on the value of the land to be used for the ESC.
The proponents argue that it is part of a buffer for the Waste Water Treatment Plant (euphemism for sewage treatment). This appears to be an inverted justification: the ESC is not placed in an area that had previously been identified as that buffer, but rather the location for the ESC is declared a buffer.
The opponents claim that the proposed location for the ESC is a critical section of the park, but not in a form that allows me to visualize it (Admission: I am horrible at visualizing such things).
Both groups have been using misleading statistics in talking about the land to be used by the ESC. The proponents use the total acreage of the baylands, which is about half marshland. The opponents talk about "Byxbee Park" which is a much smaller portion of the baylands than most resident realize.
Note: Discussions about the future of the baylands
and adjoining developed area have begun
(see PA Weekly news article listed on the web page),
but it has avoided the area proposed for the ESC and
is focused on the area from Embarcadero and to the north.
EIR
Palo Alto's partnership in the SMaRT station runs until 2021
(17 more years),
but the ESC could be built sooner to handle some of the tasks.
The decision on the ESC is being pushed now
to preserve the necessary "solid ground"
to construct the building.
An Environmental Impact Report (EIR) evaluates the impacts of a proposed project on the surrounding area on issues such as noise and traffic. The City Council is likely to make a decision in November on whether to do an EIR for this project (they have already requested bids).
EIRs are normally not done before there is a solid plan for the project, but the Council wants to use the EIR process to analyze the options while also producing the required EIR so that they can meet the deadlines. This is controversial because: