Environmentalists constructed a puppet of Michigan Governor John Engler to protest the importation of Canadian garbage. The environmentalists and their puppet were protesting at the base of the Ambassador Bridge on the U.S./Canadian border. (photo by Jeff Gearhart)
In the Great Lakes region, trash is big business. Many states havemore landfill space than they need – and they fill it with garbage fromother states and Canada. It’s not the kind of industry most people wantin their backyard. Which is why it may come as a surprise that oneMichigan town is welcoming garbage from Toronto. A plan to bury it inOntario met with strong opposition. But rural residents south of theborder say there are benefits to taking other people’s trash. The GreatLakes Radio Consortium’s Karen Kelly reports:
Transcript
In the Great Lakes region, trash is big business. Many states have more
landfill space than they need – and they fill it with garbage from
other states and Canada. In 1997 alone, the Congressional Research Service
found: Michigan imported 1.7 million tons of garbage. Wisconsin imported 1.1
million tons of garbage. Pennsylvania imported 6.3 million tons of garbage.
New York imported 159 thousand tons of garbage and
exported 3.7 million tons. Ohio imported 1 million tons of garbage.
Illinois imported 1.3 million tons of garbage.
Indiana imported 2.1 million tons of garbage. Minnesota had no imports.
It’s not the kind of industry most people want in
their backyard. Which is why it may come as a surprise that one
Michigan town is welcoming garbage from Toronto.
A plan to bury it in Ontario met with strong
opposition. But rural residents south of the border say there are
benefits to taking other people’s trash. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s
Karen Kelly reports:
Sumpter Township is about 20 miles southwest of
Detroit. It used to be farming country – but only a few farms
remain. Now, many of the 12 thousand residents are factory
workers in the auto industry. Marvin Benoti is the township supervisor.
He says the community struggled for years because
there was no industry to support local services like
sewers and police.
“It’s a nice area and stuff like that. The whole thing is we couldn’t
really do anything because we had a budget of less than 900 thousand
dollars to run the township on.”
But that changed when the Carleton Farms landfill
opened in 1993. The township’s budget increased to 2.5 million dollars
a year, thanks to the taxes and royalties paid by the
landfill’s owner. Soon, new water and sewer lines were installed.
Police officers were hired and a new firehouse was
built. As a result, Benoti says there hasn’t been much
concern about the plan to take Toronto’s garbage.
That’s in stark contrast to the protests that took
place in Kirkland Lake, Ontario. Toronto planned to dump its
garbage in an abandoned iron mine there.
But residents and environmentalists argued the mine
would leak and pollute the groundwater. So, Toronto looked south,
and signed a deal with Republic Services, Inc. to send 600 hundred thousand
tons of garbage to Sumpter Township over the next two
years. The company says that amount will likely increase.
But Benoti says most residents feel garbage is garbage, regardless
of where it’s from.
“It’s, you know, garbage that people used to go and put right
behind their house and dig holes and bury and stuff like that.
It’s something that people in rural areas used to do and probably up north do
still.”
But environmentalists in Michigan are not as accepting
of the deal. In 1992, the Supreme Court ruled that states can’t
prevent companies from bringing garbage across the border to put in
existing landfills. But opponents say the states can stop the building
of landfills that the residents don’t need. Mike Garfield is the
director of the Ecology Center, an environmental group in Ann Arbor,
Michigan – not far from where the dump operates. He worries the landfill
business is harming recycling programs.
“It’s not just that we’re being dumped on. It’s
the fact that landfilling is too common and recycling
is a better solution. We’d like to see cities across
the region, in Toronto, in Michigan, in other states
in the Great Lakes all adopt aggressive recycling
programs.”
But rural communities like Sumpter Township depend on
the landfills. Their tax revenues have built community centers, sewer
systems and roads. Still, Garfield says it’s shortsighted for rural towns
to welcome these companies.
“A little money doesn’t make up for the big problems that these
communities face cleaning up groundwater pollution, dealing with enormous
truck traffic and dealing with the smell and nuisance of a
major landfill disposal site in their town.”
Marvin Benoti of Sumpter Township says the landfill
wasn’t their first choice for local industry. But he hopes the
newly paved roads and free garbage pickup will attract other companies.
He says that’s the only way people in these towns will
see a future beyond the landfill. For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Karen Kelly.