As the Greensboro City Council carries on its confusing discussion of whether to issue RFPs or RFQs for companies seeking to put the White Street landfill to good use, one company made an interesting presentation before the City Council:

Before the RFQ discussion, Bob Mays of Cico LLC, gave a report on some of the ideas that company has for utilizing the landfill. It involves a bioreactor facility that, according to the explanation given by David Garrett, also of Cico, is composting in a vessel. The whole process would be in containers so there would be no odor and the composting process would take a matter of days, not months.

Mays said that if the company was awarded a contract by the city it would subsidize the opening of a grocery store in the area to the tune of $200,000 a year, and also give the community $1 million a year to spend on community projects. The plan would require the disposal of residential garbage at the White Street Landfill for a period while the process got up and running, but would require no investment by the city. Mays also said Cico would pay the estimated $7.5 million for closure costs on the current landfill.

Quite a bit going on here—-Cico pays to close the landfill, subsidizes a grocery store (interesting side business for a waste management company) and gives the community $1 million a year for economic development, all while under contract with the city. The source of funding for all this activity isn’t hard to trace —- you and me.

John Hammer mentions that Mayor Yvonne Johnson favors the plan proposed by Ulturnagen, which would use a “a plasma torch to reduce the garbage to its basic elements, would require a $500 million investment by the city.”