Trash, Again

Here it is Bastille Day, that terrific holiday in which everybody locked up in a Parisian jail was set free in a mad frenzy of liberty, equality, and fraternity. Something about that image really captured my imagination as a schoolgirl so that the date is firmly fixed in mind. Presented some other way, it could appear to a kid as some kind of scary jail break, I guess. Well, perspective is everything: perspective, in the sense of from what angle you are viewing this picture, which is very probably not ‘the whole picture,’ for example. In fact, it’s really hard, in the short run anyway, to get anything like the whole picture, the title of this blog notwithstanding.

More about the trash in that respect. The full email box that I mentioned yesterday was obviously not about an abandoned roadside stove but instead about the issue of how garbage and recycling will be conducted in Point Roberts. When we moved here, some fourteen years ago, nobody was collecting trash. The County has some legal responsibility to do something, but my recollection of what it did was this: it operated a transfer station which was open a couple of days a week and you were free to take your garbage there on those days and pay a fee directly. I don’t remember that they had recycling, but that was a long time ago, too long to remember what is usually a minor issue in my life.

Nine years ago, a guy came to town and set up a regular garbage and recycling collection business, licensed by whoever in the state does that kind of licensing. He’s a nice guy in my experience and easy to do business with, at least if your business is household business. His business seemed to work, although there were obviously inherent problems because the government would not mandate that everyone participate in and pay for garbage collection service. Since only about a quarter of the homes here belong to full-time residents (those who were likely to subscribe to the trash collection service), he had a very small customer base. The Canadian cottage owners, for the most part, didn’t want to pay for service that they weren’t using most of the time and they could always take their trash to the transfer station and pay a single fee for whatever amount they brought, or take it home with them to Canada, or bury it in their backyards, for all I know. But refuse/recycling collection equipment is expensive, and needs to be spread over a bigger customer base than the trash business has.

This spring, the company stopped picking up recycling when its recycling truck reached its final hours, but we could still take it ourselves to the transfer station. For most of us, not a problem. But a big problem for some parts of local government and for some locals who think that a contract is a contract and since he said the business would provide curbside recycling he must do that or go out of business.

In addition, I hear, there is an issue about how the business was charging for collecting containers of building debris. Some people, especially those who had building debris that needed to be disposed of, found his attitude hostile and his prices too high, and a couple of them went into business in competition, sort of. That is, they aren’t collecting building debris, but are collecting and recycling building debris, though how that stuff gets recycled is not entirely clear to me, and apparently not to some others.

My part in this brouhaha was to forward to a dozen or so friends and acquaintances a letter explaining why one couple favored the County helping the current guy to continue in operation. Forwarding this email turned out to be one of those good deeds that does not go unpunished. Two people—friends--immediately wrote back, outraged that I had forwarded this letter to them, even astonished that I had engaged in ‘politics,’ and insisted that I immediately remove their names from my email list.

The response seemed way out of proportion to the “affront.’ Just politics in a small town, is what another friend told me today. But all the emotion and energy involved in this topic suggests something bigger at play. Is the trash collecting monopoly license for Point Roberts really a treasured asset? Are there big bucks involved? (Follow the money is never a bad strategy for understanding les choses Americaine.) Loose talk tells me that there are people lined up to take over the refuse/recycling collection monopoly license here on the Point, despite the fact that it doesn’t seem to be a paying proposition. New efficiencies? Higher rates? Outside forces? Secret deals? Who knows? As the war in Iraq (possibly) tapers down, are the private war companies looking for other income streams? If that’s what it is, I’m thinking Halliburton or Kellog, Brown, Root will soon be providing our trash service. Ed, though, says his money is on Blackwater.