City must choose: composting vs. park (Palo Alto Earth Day Conundrum)

San Jose Mercury News ^ | 4/22/08 | Kristina Peterson

[ProtectOurFreedom]

Just in time for Earth Day, Palo Alto must decide which grass is greener - composting within city limits or creating a new park.

Residents insistent on seeing the Byxbee Park landfill become parkland - as required in the Baylands Master Plan - could force the city to start trucking out its compost to a regional location, such as the Sunnyvale station. The trucks would add 1,100 metric tons of carbon dioxide a year, according to a feasibility study released last week.

To put that sum in context, city staff members estimated that the city's entire fleet of vehicles emits just 800 metric tons more of carbon dioxide each year.

"It's a difficult choice," Public Works Director Glenn Roberts said Monday. "There are competing value systems at work here, with equally valid arguments on both sides."

The 7.5-acre composting facility on the Byxbee Park landfill processes about 21,000 tons of yard waste and green materials each year. If residents want to continue the composting program at the new park, they will have to go to the polls.

City staff members looked at several other sites to see whether composting operations could be moved within the city, including the Palo Alto airport and the recently purchased Los Altos treatment plant. But the alternative locations would all require new designs, construction costs and expensive machinery, totaling about $7.5 million for each site, the report said.

Walt Hays, chairman of the new collaborative group Community Environmental Action Partnership, said he supports taking a small piece of the Baylands to keep composting in Palo Alto.

"It isn't sacrificing parkland because it is not a park now," he said. "The park area there is huge, and people wouldn't even notice if this was not added to the park."

[ProtectOurFreedom]

OH NO! What's a liberal to do? Provide nice parkland for families and spew out many more tons of evil CO₂ hauling compost waste? Or deny families that wonderful parkland and, at the same time, avoid all those unnecessary trips in those earth-destroying, emissions belching trucks?

It's no wonder liberals need EcoTherapy help to get through the day.

[teacherwoes]

They can do both. Just turn it into a composting park and then they can have picnics among the composting piles. When they are finished they don’t have far to walk to throw away some of their garbage.

[tubebender]

You haven’t been gone a week and PA has a major crisis of epic proportions! Something doesn’t smell right about this story..

[spokeshave]

Palo Alto...Eh....rich yuppie subburb...

Make them buy hydrogen powered trucks to move the garbage....

Only costs $45 a mile to run them (San Francisco has a few of these for bus use and report costs)

[Wil H]

The trucks would add 1,100 metric tons of carbon dioxide a year,

It would take 126,343 gallons of Diesel to create 1100 metric tons of CO2.

Even if you assume they get only 6 miles to the gallon that would be over three quarters of a million truck/miles a year to shift the compost.

The distance between the two sites is 9.7 miles so that means each truck round trip is 19.4 miles.

Assuming a 5 day work week, that would require 150 round trips per day, every weekday of the year to create that much CO2.

Assuming an 8 hour work day, that would be a truck every three minutes.

That's a LOT of Compost.

[Wil H]

Something does not compute. They state that they process 21,000 tons of waste a year.

To create 1100 metric tons of CO2 at 6 mpg of fuel burn and a 19.4 mile round trip would require 39,000 trips a year.

That means each load would average only 1206 lbs or just over half a ton.

they are blowing smoke up everyone's ass..

[steelyourfaith]

 

Beam me to Planet Gore !