Guarino ponders a manufactured Greensboro water crisis, with help from his friend Mike Baron, a former city water conservation manager:
Mike has data suggesting that water demand in Greensboro– in spite of his dismissal– has been decreasing. He attributes this to a sharp reduction in high-volume industrial users. There is much less industrial usage of water because so many plants have closed or downsized over the last decade. This has occurred even though the city had been projecting significant increases in water demand; and these projected increases were used to justify the Randleman Dam project.
The same can be said for the manufactured air quality crisis, since many major polluters have shut down over years, right? Meanwhile, City Council member Mike Barber ever vigiliant in saving taxpayers’ money, wants the city to consider reopening the White Street landfill:
Barber has asked city staff to compare the costs of operating the city’s transfer station with the costs of sending municipal waste to the landfill in northeast Greensboro. Barber said the city is wasting millions, and city manager Mitchell Johnson estimates costs of perhaps $3 million a year to send trucks on the 146-mile round-trip to Mount Gilead.
In a world of escalating gas prices, it doesn’t make fiscal sense, Barber said.
“If there are decisions we’ve made in our past and they are costing taxpayers millions of dollars, we’ve got to revisit that,” Barber said.
I can’t help but notice that the article has a picture of waste disposal operations supervisor David Scott Bost, yet he’s not quoted in the article. Why? Would it not be interesting to hear his views on the situation instead of politicians or, for that matter, City Manager Mitchell Johnson?
During the debate over whether to close White Street or expand it, someone who worked in city solid waste told me the landfill had 50 years’ capacity as it was. Correct me if I’m wrong, but this fact was openly discussed at the time. And, as rising fuel prices were an issue when PTIA was handing Skybus incentives, they were also an issue when the city was considering shipping garbage elsewhere.
Problem is former City Council member Tom Phillips is right when he says Barber “can go around running into windmills all he wants to, but you’ve got to be practical” when referring to permitting obstacles and the threat of lawsuits from nearby residents. Sometimes you just can’t turn back the clock, and that’s often a hard lesson for city government.
