By MARK DEVOLDER
Los Alamos
This letter addresses the need for improved coordination between Los Alamos Residential and Commercial Property Owners and Los Alamos County Community Development, Environmental Services, and Environmental Sustainability efforts.
Recently, there was an interesting letter in the Los Alamos Daily Post about a joint Los Alamos County Environmental Services and Environmental Sustainability effort supporting the donation of clothing to thrift stores and “thrifting” (that is, purchasing used clothing at thrift stores). The effort potentially keeps clothing from being disposed of in a landfill. This got me thinking about other items which are disposed of at the Los Alamos Ecostation and eventually in a landfill.
For years, “mixed” construction materials have been discarded at the Los Alamos Ecostation. Once the construction materials are discarded, they are loaded into trailers and transported to a landfill for disposal. The transportation effort generates particulate air pollution from diesel trucks. Use of construction equipment for burial at the landfill generates more air pollution.
The Los Alamos Community Development Department controls Building and Nuisance Code Enforcement efforts in Los Alamos. Building efforts usually entail the generation of construction material waste (that is, materials from demolition efforts and scraps from the building effort). Similarly, Nuisance Code Enforcement personnel may find discarded items they don’t like on Los Alamos County residential and commercial properties. Then Nuisance Code Enforcement personnel jump all over the owners. The owners then proceed to clean up everything and haul it all off to the Ecostation.
The building activities and Nuisance Code Enforcement efforts create a burden for the Ecostation. It costs money to haul the construction material and Nuisance Code-related waste to the landfill, degrades air quality during the transportation/burial efforts, and leads to the release of chemicals from the buried waste materials. The chemicals may eventually find their way into sources of domestic drinking water. Some of these issues adversely affect the environment and our environmental sustainability efforts.
As far as I know, there may be coordination weaknesses affecting the Community Development, Environmental Services and Environmental Sustainability efforts. One weakness is the handling of cementitious, wood, and metal construction wastes. Construction materials are not sorted and disposed of in the appropriate locations at the Ecostation (that is, the location for concrete / brick / asphalt rubble, the pallet pile, the scrap metal bin, and the cardboard dumpster). The same is the case for Nuisance Code-related waste items from residential and commercial property owners including items like wooden furniture and wooden landscaping waste such as fencing, metal shelving, etc.
Due to a lack of sorting, there may be construction lumber which could potentially be disposed in the pallet pile and then re-purposed from that location. Unfortunately, cementitious and metal waste items are not available to the public, but still need appropriate sorting and recycling.
Community Development has enforcement capability and needs to take the lead in forcing the sorting and proper disposal of construction material waste and Nuisance Code-related waste. Currently, there is quite a bit of focus on the Nuisance Code. However, there is no focus on the handling Nuisance Code-related waste or construction material waste.
An additional benefit is more responsible construction workers as well as residential and commercial property owners when it comes to handling waste items.
I believe it is going to take a concerted effort to get things properly coordinated and humming along between residential- and commercial-owner, Community Development, Environmental Services, and Environmental Sustainability efforts. We are way behind China and Europe on such efforts.
