Last we looked, the council tabled till after its summer vacation a proposal from Marys Suhm and Nix to force all the solid-waste haulers in the city to
dump their trash at the McCommas Bluff Landfill rather than one of the
dozen other sites in the region. The city manager and head of Sanitation Services, respectively, insist that not only will the so-called "flow control" proposal generate upwards of $17 million in additional revenue annually, but create tons of energy via a methane-capturing system out at the landfill that the city can use and, of course, sell. Which it already does. Just, not as much as City Hall says will be available. One day.
Anyway. As we've noted several times in recent months, the waste haulers are decidedly opposed to the idea, insisting, among other things, that it will lead to "high landfill prices," which will "lead to smaller companies illegally diverting their waste to other landfills or dumping it illegally." And folks living in, and representing, the southern sector fear all that extra trash and traffic being diverted into the part of town. As Paul Quinn College President Michael Sorrell told the Chronicle of Higher Education earlier this month, "Economic development can come in many forms, but it starts with people being properly nourished -- that's food, not refuse."
Now there's this: The National Solid Wastes Management Association has launched a website devoted to killing the proposal, Fight City of Dallas Flow Control. That's where, earlier this week, it posted a ream of documents obtained via an open-records request, among them emails in which Nix and other sanitation department employees ask former Dallas city manager Richard Knight, who has a waste disposal company, and officials with such companies as Organic Energy Corporation and GGI Energy to come before the council and sell the whole trash-to-treasure proposal. As far as the NSWA's concerned, this is out of bounds: "Where is the vetting process to determine whether proposals make economic sense:
"If the city is considering this type of program where is the RFP inviting all qualified companies to compete for the business? Where is the vetting process to determine whether proposals make economic sense?"
Nix and I have been trading messages, and she's presently on a plane headed out of town. So I called Mary Suhm to see if she had any response to the website -- which, as it turns out, she's heard of but yet to look at. But, she says, the city hasn't issued a request for proposals because the council hasn't agreed to flow control -- a proposal first floated in June of last year as a possible budget-balancer that went nowhere at the time.
Suhm says it won't be in the budget she'll present to the council a week from Friday -- which doesn't mean it can't make an appearance before her proposal becomes a done deal. There will be another flow control briefing to the council next month, says Suhm, "because I believe it's something we should be doing." So do others at City Hall: Council members are being asked, privately, to sign off on the deal. Meanwhile, the solid-waste association is asking council members to vote no in mailers that have been sent to their homes and offices.
When asked about the emails to and from Knight, Suhm says, "People come all the time to talk to the council about ideas under consideration, to give the council more information. There are a lot of people getting into the business, into energy transformation technology. I don't know any of us can say how it will evolve, but it's happening, and we want to keep that resource within the city.
"There's an emerging technology that will transform garbage into energy -- garbage the citizens of Dallas produce that is a resource -- and if we have a mechanism to store it, we ought to do that, because it is going to be a source of revenue and will keep our costs down on the tax side and the sanitation side, and it will be a valuable resource. It seems to me if the city has a place to store the resource, it's a good, long-term public policy."
But, she does acknowledge: Southern sector council members concerned about the increase in traffic and trash to the McCommas Bluff Landfill have a valid concern -- one, she insists, that will be addressed. When asked how, Suhm says that'll be addressed in the August briefing.
"We can document there will not be a whole lot more trucks," she says. "Yes, there will be more trash, but this is about looking to the future, toward a good industry with good, high-paying jobs that will allow us to collaborate with universities for jobs of the future. We need to do something to make sure we aren't causing long-term damage and imposing on South Dallas. That's the most challenging thing: How do we accomplish that? So now it's up to the council. I promised them we'd balance the budget without [flow control], but in my mind this is something for the long term, and if they wanna take longer deciding, that's all right. But the longer they take, the more you stand to lose."
