RALEIGH – North Carolina, trash magnet.
No, this is not some oblique reference to recent news events in the state capital. Nor is it some bigoted commentary on immigration from north of the Mason-Dixon, immigration from the south of the Rio Grande, or certain error-prone college-football teams.
“Trash magnet” is, rather, what The Charlotte Observer speculates in its Sunday edition that our state might soon become if planned mega-landfills are built in several rural counties. Coming weeks after a Raleigh News & Observer story with an even-more-zesty headline – “NC set to become Yankee Dump” – the Observer story provides a slightly different perspective on the issue of interstate markets for solid waste. As David St. Hubbins might put it, there is really “too much [blinking] perspective” here, and not enough facts.
North Carolina is currently a major waste exporter, as the Observer points out. The planned landfills would apparently turn the state into a not-so-major importer. Refuse already traverses the state going out. Now travel patterns will change. Are there costs, environmental and otherwise, to locating a landfill in a community? Naturally. In some North Carolina communities, most citizens believe these costs outweigh any potential benefits and have expressed their opposition. But in other communities, residents see the benefits, in jobs and revenue, to be greater than the costs and are working assiduously to get landfills permitted and under construction.
As Dr. Michael Sanera, JLF’s research director, explains in a recent Spotlight briefing paper, the market for solid-waste disposal has been changing significantly over the past decade. Innovations in waste hauling, liners and other environmental safeguards, and company organization have led to larger landfills that are cleaner, safer, and more efficient.
These enterprises may not be a good fit in land markets where there is high demand for new housing or retail developments, for obvious reasons. But in other areas, in particular communities where anchor industries have been declining, landfills represent a promising economic opportunity. To denigrate the result as a “trash magnet” or “Yankee dump” may give big-city snobs and recycling mavens a burst of satisfaction, but it does no one else any favors. Perhaps the former want the roads cleared so they can make their way, rapidly, through rural North Carolina on the way to their mountain or beach retreats. And the latter may still dream of the day when shoppers will carry their own burlap bags to the organic grocer and smelt their own personal iron in their backyard blast furnaces.
But the rest of us want a little common sense and more than a little modern convenience. And folks in rural counties want to create jobs and generate revenue to pay for infrastructure improvements such as schools and roads. These benefits of interstate waste markets are available as long as state policymakers don’t attempt to intervene with new “state disposal fees” or other mechanisms to overrule local and consumer decisions.
Yes, environmental regulators should ensure that the new landfills protect water quality. And yes, local officials should ensure that the resulting traffic is adequately accommodated. But spare us the “trash magnet” and “Yankee dump” talk. If you must make up terms of derision for economic-development projects, why not stick to the ones that are destined to flop, rather than the ones likely to succeed?
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation.