Ala. towns protest NYC sewage shipments to local landfill - Entrepreneur Generations

Rural residents in northern Alabama put their foot down about solid sewage shipments from New York City, resulting in a legal dispute that has left 200 shipping containers full of the smelly stuff rotting in traincars, stalled for six weeks near Parrish, Ala., on their way to a nearby landfill.

Locals have been complaining about the stink and flies for the past year and a half that NYC has been shipping its sewage waste to Big Sky Landfill in Adamsville, 25 miles away from Parrish. At a recent public hearing on a permit renewal for Big Sky, Charlies Nix, mayor of nearby town West Jefferson, said the train cars frequently leak sticky sewage sludge on his town's roads. "I never dreamed someone could flush a commode in New York, and it would run out in my backyard," he said.

"This is a little-seen part of daily life in America. Big cities produce more waste than they can dispose of. So all across the country, pipes, trucks and trains carry waste elsewhere to be incinerated, dumped or used as fertilizer," Valerie Bauerlein and Kate King report for the Wall Street Journal. "Over the past decade, private landfills in the rural South have agreed to take sludge from out of state. But communities near landfills like Big Sky are increasingly pushing back, saying the tax revenue and jobs don’t outweigh the negative effects."

The mayors of West Jefferson and Parrish met with Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey this week, asking her help in stopping the flow of NYC waste to their area. State regulators in Alabama are expected to decide soon whether to renew Big Sky's permit, following public hearings, soliciting written comments, and reviewing the company's regulatory records.

from The Rural Blog https://ift.tt/2q4AXj2 Ala. towns protest NYC sewage shipments to local landfill - Entrepreneur Generations

Posted by Entrepreneur Generations

Tweet