Many 'recycled' items go to a landfill instead; here's how to improve your recycling efforts, particularly involving plastics

Consumers who pay attention to recycling details can help their local program succeed.
(Photo by A.V. Loarca, Newsday RM, Getty Images via The Conversation)

Sometimes items Americans toss into recycling cans get a second life, but all too often, they end up in the landfill. In his column for The Conversation, Alex Jordan, an associate professor of Plastics Engineering at the University of Wisconsin, explains how single-stream recycling works, gives examples of which items work best for recycling, and details what U.S. consumers can do to improve their recycling habits. He includes a handy video that illustrates the single-stream recycling process from start to finish.

Single-stream recycling means that consumers can put all their recyclable items in one bin for pick up, which are taken to a facility that sorts and divides the items. "While single-stream recycling is convenient, it has downsides," Jordan explains. "Contamination, such as food residue, plastic bags and items that can’t be recycled, can degrade the quality of the remaining material, making it more difficult to reuse. That lowers its value."

While every recycling program has its own rules, there are some fairly universal guides regarding what can be recycled, which means many items tossed into recycling bins will never be repurposed. "A large percentage of material never gets a second life," Jordan notes. "Reports in recent years have found 15% to 25% of all the materials picked up from recycling bins end up in landfills instead. Plastics are among the biggest challenges."

Which plastics are recyclable? The recycling code stamp on the plastic next to the recycling icon will let you know. In general, products stamped with symbols 3, 4 or six are not recyclable. Jordan adds, "That leaves three plastics that can be recycled in many facilities." Those include:

• Symbol 1 – Soda bottles are often made of Polyethylene terephthalate or PET.
• Symbol 2 – This plastic, known as high-density polyethylene, or HDPE, is found in most milk jugs and laundry detergent bottles,
• Symbol 5 – Polypropylene, PP, is used in products such as pill bottles, yogurt cups and plastic utensils.

Researchers are working on ways to make "recycled materials more versatile and valuable and move products closer to a goal of a circular economy without waste," Jordan explains. "However, improving recycling also requires better recycling habits. Consumers can help the recycling process by: 

• Taking a few minutes to wash off food waste.
• Avoiding putting plastic bags in your recycling bin.
• Paying attention to what can and cannot be recycled in your area.

A single-stream recycling system. (Van Dyk Recycling Solutions video via The Conversation)
 

Home septic systems need regular care and maintenance to prevent 'seriously unpleasant' and expensive problems

Protozoa, rotifers, and other microorganisms work in
septic systems. (Image via Southern Sanitary Systems)

People who migrate from the city to more remote areas are wise to learn what many rural dwellers already know -- taking care of your home's septic system is serious business.

"You may want to ignore it," writes Kris Frieswick of The Wall Street Journal. "But there is only one thing worse than personally interacting with your septic system and its parts — the septic tank and leach field— and that is ignoring it. . . . [It] demands little except your consideration and maintenance, without which it will make your life seriously unpleasant."

While waste management discussions may feel unseemly, the topic is so essential that even the Old Testament gives instructions. Frieswick explains, "Deuteronomy 23:12-13 commands: 'Designate a place outside the camp where you can go to relieve yourself. As part of your equipment, have something to dig with, and when you relieve yourself, dig a hole and cover up your excrement.'. . . Bet you didn't know you had a big old hunk of Moses-approved engineering history buried next to your rhododendron."

Septic systems are more complex than a hole in the ground, but the idea is the same. Frieswick reports, "Your effluent flows through pipes into your oxygen-free septic tank, where bacteria (most of which is thoughtfully provided by your gut) eats undigested material, explains Robert Rubin, emeritus professor of biological and agricultural engineering at North Carolina State University. . . . Once those little bacterias in the tank get to work, the solids float or drop and the watery part drains off via pipe to a leach field." The leach field is the magical place where bacteria work pays off.

But things can go awry. "Septic tanks can get cracks in them. . . . Or they can back up if the pipes get clogged with grease," Frieswick writes. Inorganic material flushed accidentally can wreak havoc as well.

Before buying a new home, have the system separately inspected. Remember that tanks are built for bedroom capacity of a home. Capacity could be an issue if bedrooms are added to a house after its septic system. Use liquid detergents instead of powder, and fix water leaks that could stress the system. Plan on regular maintenance to avoid blockage headaches and pricey repairs.

      Knowing how a septic system works helps inform homeowners and renters on how to care for it.

Transforming wastewater directly into drinking water might sound 'yucky,' but experts say it could work well

A wastewater purification system.
(Photo by Matt Vasilogambros, Stateline)

Toilet water repurposed as drinking water has one major challenge -- the 'yuck' factor. "After an Orange County resident flushes her toilet, the water flows through the Southern California community's sewer system, meanders its way to the sanitation plant, has its solids removed, is piped to a wastewater recycling facility next door and undergoes three different purification processes until it is clean enough to drink," report Matt Vasilogambros and Kevin Hardy of Stateline. After some sips from the sampling station, Mehul Patel, executive director of operations for the Orange County Water District's project, told Stateline, "It tastes like water. . . . It's just like any other water, but it's gone through a lot. People shouldn't judge where it came from, but where it is now."

Patel's sanitized water is not being sent as drinking water to any customers. "No large community in the U.S. is taking water from toilets and transforming it directly into clean drinking water right now," Vasilogambros and Hardy explain. "But the demonstration might offer a glimpse of the future, as states and communities across the country design new plants that will do just that, giving communities more control over their water supply as the climate gets drier. . . . And officials face some pushback from skeptics concerned about the high costs of advanced purification systems and from a public not used to the idea of drinking what was once their own waste."

The town of Castle Rock, Colorado, which lies east of the Rocky Mountains, has been using the technology and is on a path to sending it to consumers. "Directly recycling wastewater into drinking water will eventually allow residents to hold onto more of their precious water supply. . . . The town will be able to recycle its municipal water over and over at a water treatment plant that was upgraded in 2021," Stateline reports. "While the plant already has the capability, it's not sending treated wastewater directly to customers yet; it will likely take three to five years to meet new regulations on potable reuse announced by the state in January. The rules include a full year of water quality monitoring and a community awareness campaign before implementation."

In parched Kansas, the idea may take a while to gain traction. Jason Solomon, a technical assistant at the Kansas Rural Water Association, thinks "direct wastewater recycling is likely a ways off in Kansas given its stigma and costs," Stateline reports. "But [he thinks] it's an idea worth considering with recent droughts threatening drinking water supplies even in the traditionally wettest part of the state." He said, "Why don't we just take it directly from the wastewater plant? Why would we put it back in the river? It's going to get dirtier in the river."

Repurposing sewage can be environmentally friendly, but it's objectionable to some, and has to be carefully managed

Old-time ad for Milwaukee's processed sewage sludge

Recycle. Reuse. Repurpose. Repeat. Or so goes the ever-living mantra. "The precepts of circular economy—reusing water, using biodegradable plastic, composting food leftovers so they can be returned to the soil rather than become landfill—are among the hottest ideas of our century," reports Lina Zeldovich for JSTOR Daily. "But what about recycling what our food becomes after we eat it? Yes, that means excrement, a critical substance in the thoroughly functioning circular economy, seems to be left out of the equation. . . . Our industrial treatment systems separate the so-called biosolids out of the sewage stream, purify the water, and release it back to nature, but they rarely extract these essential nutrients in the process. Instead of fertilizing the fields then, the nutrients fertilize the waterways—and wreak havoc in them."

A cycle of environmental problems ensues, Zeldovich reports: "The nutrients overfertilize the water, causing what scientists call eutrophication or nitrogen overloading, which fuels toxic algae blooms, destroys coastal marshes, kills mangrove forests, and smothers corals. What happens with the remaining biosolids—a euphemism for the malodorous, pathogen-infested black muck—is equally ugly. Sometimes it’s burned, releasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and contributing to greenhouse gas emissions. "

Zeldovich writes, "We must figure out how to return our sludge back to land. The necessary tools already exist to do so Even better, there are technologies that turn human waste into humanure. Zeldovich provides an surprising old example: "Milorganite: Human-Made in Milwaukee Since 1925. In 1914, the Milwaukee Sewerage Commission began to experiment with a new approach for wastewater treatment." A treatment plant that opened in 1925 was the first in the nation "to tap into nature’s power to clean wastewater. But while these bacteria decomposed excrement, the gooey and gunky end product left behind still needed to be dealt with. Agronomist Oyvind Juul Noer realized that the muck contained high levels of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium . . . the key fertilizers plants need to grow. Compared to manure and chemical fertilizer, this microbe-processed sludge produced superior growth results. Milwaukee sewage authorities figured out how to dry and process the muck into pellets and began churning out this human-made fertilizer."

Milwaukee's process has been copied in many places, and there have been many public objections to farmers' use of it. "The presence of potentially toxic metals is the main factor that limits such use," says a 2016 paper in the journal Circular Economy and Sustainability. "Many techniques have been employed in attempt to remove these toxic metals, including physical, chemical, and biological treatments, but the high cost of the physical and chemical treatments, as well as the risk of causing secondary pollution, makes this type of sewage-sludge treatment an unsatisfactory option. Therefore, removing toxic metals through biological treatments has become an increasingly popular choice, as such treatments have been shown to be the most economically and environmentally beneficial methods."

There are other challenges to using human waste as fertilizer, including "the number of pathogens it contained—an issue modern tech addresses," Zeldovich writes. "A newer concern is the problem of hormones, antibiotics, and PFAS. . . . But the sewage industry is already working on ways to address these. Even the most stable chemical compounds fall apart under high temperatures and pressures; called pyrolysis, one such process may be the path to their destruction." Environmental experts say proper management, including careful application, is essential to use of sewage sludge on farms.

JSTOR Daily says it is "an online publication that contextualizes current events with scholarship." Its parent platform is a "digital library of academic journals, books, images, primary sources, research reports, and other material."

Tenn. farmers challenge Tyson Foods' right to taxpayer financing, saying barns it controls are not 'family farms'

Chicken barns controlled by Tyson Foods in West Tennessee house more than 624,000 chickens
each and produce massive quantities of waste. (Tennessee Outlook photo by John Partipilo)

Tyson Foods' rapid expansion across the rural U.S. has been partially taxpayer-financed, with Department of Agriculture loans. Both the rapid expansion and the use of taxpayer dollars for corporate growth, seemingly without oversight, has some West Tennessee farmers taking stock: "A new lawsuit brought by the Southern Environmental Law Center, banded together to form 'Concerned Citizens of West Tennessee,' is now challenging the federal government’s role in providing tens of millions of dollars in taxpayer-backed loans to Tyson contract growers," reports Anita Wadhwani of Tennessee Lookout. The suit claims USDA, “through the Farm Service Agency, is illegally subsidizing industrial chicken operations through a federal lending program intended to provide 'family farms' with startup and operational capital.”

The lawsuit claims "federal loan guarantees are illegal because the lending program is reserved for helping ‘family farms’ And because Tyson controls virtually all aspects of the industrial chicken growing operations, those facilities are not ‘family farms’ under applicable lending rules,” Wadhwani writes. “The lawsuit notes that other government loan programs have determined that poultry contractors do not qualify for loans because of their integration into corporate operations."

Wadhwani’s object example is a $425 million meat processing plant in Humboldt, Tenn., its third large-scale plant in the state, opened last year and subsidized by “$20 million in taxpayer incentives from the administration of Gov. Bill Lee."

In addition to taxpayer financing, local farmers are concerned about the plants’ pollution and lack of oversight. "The lawsuit also accuses the Farm Service Agency of failing to follow its own rules in conducting thorough environmental impact studies of farm operations seeking the loans — or in keeping local communities informed," Wadhwani reports. "Instead, the federal agency only conducts perfunctory environmental reviews, before issuing 'rubber-stamped approval.'"

James Lavel, a retired Navy commander who has advocated for greater poultry operation regulation, told Wadhwani that he has been frustrated by local and state elected leaders’ actions, and inactions: “I’ve gotten a hodgepodge of excuses from them. And then the FSA comes in here and uses our taxpayer money for this. If you just keep putting the people at risk you’re trying to feed, what’s the point? We need regulations. They exist to protect the people.”

North Carolina is the biggest chicken state, but at what cost to the environment? Veils of secrecy make it hard to say

The Charlotte Observer located and mapped almost 4,700 chicken farms in North Carolina.

"North Carolina’s poultry industry has taken flight. Farms now stand near the mountains, the coast and the state’s largest cities," the Charlotte Observer reports. Don’t know much about it? That’s no surprise, even to residents of the Tar Heel State, which cloaks Big Poultry in secrecy, But the newspaper says it "mapped 4,679 farms in 79 counties across the state," in a major revelation.

"Environmental regulators almost never inspect the state’s 4,600-plus poultry farms. They can’t monitor where all the waste goes. They don’t even know where most of the farms are. Neighbors complain about the stench and other nuisances," Gavin Off, Adam Wagner, and Ames Alexander report. "But state laws leave courts and local governments nearly powerless to help.. . . So-called dry-litter farms produce billions of pounds of waste with no requirement that they obtain environmental permits or get inspected. The manure isn’t treated. It’s stored in piles, often in sheds, until it’s spread on fields as fertilizer. A tiny fraction fuels power plants. Some washes into North Carolina’s public waterways, evidence shows."

The costs are more than environmental, they write: "Multi-billion dollar companies, critics say, shift financial risk to contract farmers . . . who sometimes live with massive debt and little income. All of that is by design. But what’s the cost?"

Johnny “Van” Garris wonders. He sees how the industry has grown "every time he leaves his driveway," the reporters write. "No matter which way he turns, Garris drives by some of the roughly 50 massive poultry barns that have sprung up within a mile of his Anson County home. He says, “If I didn’t already live here, I wouldn’t buy a piece of land to build a house here — not in the middle of all this.”

"Nearly all the barns were built since 2015 as farmers rushed to join a $4.7 billion North Carolina industry that state officials have allowed to grow with no local control and minimal state regulation," the Observer reports. "With chickens and turkey production increasing by 33% in the past two decades — more than half of that growth coming in the past five years — poultry is North Carolina’s No. 1 agriculture business. By one measure, pounds of meat produced, North Carolina is the nation’s top chicken state."

The state "does not require that neighbors be notified if a poultry farm is planned near their homes. In fact, the state shields the locations of poultry farms. Only state Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services staff know the addresses of dry-litter farms, which are nearly all of this state’s large poultry operations. Secrecy here not only blocks the public’s view of what occurs on individual farms, it prevents regulators and researchers from assessing the industry’s collective impact on people and the environment. Reporters polled 10 states, including six among the nation’s top 10 poultry producers, and found all disclosed more information or regulated poultry farming more rigorously than North Carolina."

Rural recycling programs in U.S. are squeezed by China's tougher standards for imports of paper and other waste

"Big cities have shielded their residents from the impact of China’s decision last year to curtail the solid waste it will accept from other countries. But rural and small-town residents are starting to get squeezed by a change that is wreaking havoc on the global recycling market," Rebecca Beitsch reports for Stateline.

China was the world's largest importer of waste paper, used plastic and scrap metal for decades, but last year stopped accepting some kinds of recyclables and tightened its standards for the purity of what it accepts. It wants less non-recyclable waste, hazardous waste, or incorrectly sorted recyclables mixed in with recyclables) The recycling industry generally tolerates between 1 percent to 5 percent impurity in recyclables, but China's new standard is 0.5 percent.

Normally, communities or their contractors can recoup some or all of the cost of their recycling programs by selling the scrap, but China's policy shift has rendered some types of recyclables worthless. While some cities have been able to absorb the financial hit, many small towns can't.

"Small-town recycling programs already are more expensive than those in bigger cities," Beitsch reports. "Houses tend to be farther apart, making collection more expensive. Rural communities spend more to transport their recyclables to centers that can find markets. And they cannot produce the volume of material that buyers want." That's why many use private contractors.

As a result of the policy shift, many small towns and rural areas have had to curtail or end recycling programs or pay more to dump scrap at nearby recycling centers. 

Brittany Prischak, the environmental sustainability coordinator for Erie County, Pennsylvania, told Beitsch that the squeeze will make it harder to keep the county recycling program going, though state law mandates such programs in communities with more than 10,000 residents. China's decision is highlighting and widening a rural-urban divide in terms of recycling opportunities, Prischak told Beitsch: "Before the changes even started to happen you could see the difference of where recycling was most convenient in urban areas versus where it’s difficult like rural areas to recycle even if they want to recycle."

National parks, left open but understaffed during government shutdown over border wall, are being trashed

A line of cars streamed into Joshua Tree National Park on Saturday despite the federal government's partial shutdown, meaning visitors entered without having to pay the usual $30 fee. (Los Angeles Times photo by Jay Clendenin)

The partial federal government shutdown has had a big, and sometimes disgusting, impact on national parks. Restrooms and visitor centers have been closed and trash collection discontinued since the shutdown began on Dec. 22, but parks remain open to visitors and are only lightly staffed. The result: overflowing garbage cans, littering, and human waste on the ground.

"Yosemite National Park visitors using the side of the road as a toilet have prompted the park to close two campgrounds and a popular redwood grove for public-safety reasons," Matt Forgione reports for the Los Angeles Times. "Death Valley, whose most popular landmarks have been crowded during the winter holidays, says outhouses are open but aren’t being cleaned or stocked with toilet paper during the closure."

The problem stems from the Trump administration's unusual decision to leave the parks open to visitors during the shutdown over the president's demand for funding of a border wall, Ellen Knickmeyer and Jocelyn Gecker report for The Associated Press.

“We’re afraid that we’re going to start seeing significant damage to the natural resources in parks and potentially to historic and other cultural artifacts," John Gardner, senior budget director of the nonprofit National Parks Conservation Association, told AP. "We’re concerned there’ll be impacts to visitors’ safety."

The National Park Service has the authority to close any areas where garbage or waste become a threat to visitors' health and safety, historical artifacts, or wildlife, AP reports.

Looking for solutions to sewage problems in Alabama's Black Belt -- and perhaps other rural areas with the issue

Lowndes County, Alabama
(Wikipedia map)

Thousands of low-income rural Alabama residents have had to live with inefficient or failing wastewater treatment systems for decades, sickening them and lowering their property values. Activists, researchers and journalists have pushed the crisis into the public eye, making officials pay more attention, reports Melissa Brown of the Montgomery Advertiser.

A United Nations team that investigates extreme poverty around the world toured the U.S. last year and reported that people in Alabama's Black Belt are "suffering the most dire sewage disposal crisis of any place [inspector Philip Alston] has visited in a developed country," Connor Sheets reported at the time for Alabama.com. Alston noted that residents in rural Butler and Lowndes counties often fall ill with infections from E. coli bacteria and hookworm because of the sewage -- ailments that he said were "very uncommon in the First World."

Lowndes County is one of the poorest counties in the state, with a median income below $28,000. So residents and towns can't afford to put in better waste-disposal systems -- which are more expensive there anyway. Civil engineer Kevin White told Brown that "Normally, it might cost $2,000 to put in a septic tank and a drain field in Mobile or Tuscaloosa . . . But in the Black Belt, with the poor soils, the system has to be so large or so complicated that we’re talking $8,000 to $10,000 or even more." White has been working on creating more innovative and affordable Black Belt wastewater solutions for decades; he led a study for the University of South Carolina more than 10 years ago that found that half of rural households in Bibb County had raw sewage pooling on the ground. He's currently studying similar conditions in Wilcox and Hale counties.

White says these rural areas need creative solutions, such as compost toilets or outhouses, or more efficient (but more expensive) toilet systems that use air and a small amount of liquid to flush. Brown notes, "Plumbing manufacturer American Standard sent a team of engineers to Lowndes County last year and is in the initial stages of developing potential product solutions for rural septic issues."

Catherine Flowers, a Lowndes County native and rural development manager for the Equal Justice Initiative, has been working with researchers at Duke University to explore policy changes, funding mechanisms and septic system engineering solutions to the problem. Flowers told Brown she hopes their work can help other rural communities across the U.S. struggling with similar issues.

"It’s not just a Black Belt problem. There’s no one-size-fits-all solution to this," Flowers told Brown. "I think what we’re putting together is a template for how these different entities can and should work together to find solutions. We’re working on a life-giving and life-sustaining solution."

Alabama towns protest backup of rail cars full of New York City sewage sludge headed for local landfill

Rural residents in Northern Alabama put their foot down about shipments of sewage solids from New York City, resulting in a legal dispute that has left 200 shipping containers full of the smelly stuff rotting in train cars, stalled for six weeks near Parrish, Ala., on their way to a nearby landfill.

Locals have been complaining about the stink and flies for the past year and a half that New York has been shipping the waste to Big Sky Landfill in Adamsville, 25 miles away from Parrish. At a recent public hearing on a permit renewal for Big Sky, Charlies Nix, mayor of nearby West Jefferson, said the train cars frequently leak sticky sewage sludge on his town's roads. "I never dreamed someone could flush a commode in New York, and it would run out in my backyard," he said.

"This is a little-seen part of daily life in America. Big cities produce more waste than they can dispose of," Valerie Bauerlein and Kate King report for the Wall Street Journal. "All across the country, pipes, trucks and trains carry waste elsewhere to be incinerated, dumped or used as fertilizer. Over the past decade, private landfills in the rural South have agreed to take sludge from out of state. But communities near landfills like Big Sky are increasingly pushing back, saying the tax revenue and jobs don’t outweigh the negative effects."

The Parrish Town Council voted Feb. 28 to deny Big Sky a local business license but "did grant temporary approval for the company to remove the more than 250 metal containers," Elaine Jones of the Jasper Daily Mountain Eagle reported. Mayor Heather Hall said, “When the temperatures reached 80 degrees . . . the smell became unbearable.”A Big Sky spokesman blamed the backlog of cars on delays by Norfolk Southern Railway and said “You will never again see this number of rail cars on this site.”

The mayors of Parrish and West Jefferson met with Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey this week, asking her help in stopping the flow of New York waste to their area. State regulators are expected to decide soon whether to renew Big Sky's permit, following public hearings, soliciting written comments, and reviewing the company's regulatory records.

Leaked Trump infrastructure plan includes incentives for rural transportation, broadband, utilities

A leaked draft of the Trump administration's infrastructure plan, obtained by Axios, shows plans to spur major development in rural areas. The plan has no dollar amounts, but calls for giving 25 percent of its budget to rural transportation, broadband, water and wastewater facilities, electric and other power facilities, and water resources, Jacob Pramuk reports for CNBC.

The plan says 50 percent of its budget would go for grants to encourage state, local and private investment in infrastructure. "Another 10 percent would go toward ​a “transformative projects program” to fund “exploratory and ground-breaking ideas," Mark Moore reports for the New York Post.

"The White House has previously promoted a $1 trillion infrastructure plan, Pramuk reports. "Previous reports indicate it would aim to spur $800 billion in state, local and private spending with $200 billion in federal spending."

White House spokesperson Lindsay Walters told Pramuk that the administration would not comment on the leaked document, but would present its plan in the "near future."

Uncle and nephew win Kentucky award for public service through community journalism

Ryan Craig and his late uncle, Larry Craig

Ryan Craig was majoring in history and public relations at Western Kentucky University when his uncle Larry, a rural journalist who was teaching journalism there, told him to try journalism: “You would do a lot more good, and wouldn’t have to worry about having too much money.” He followed in his uncle's footsteps, buying a weekly paper and turning it into a respected watchdog. This week the Craigs won the Al Smith Award for public service through journalism by a Kentuckian, presented by the Bluegrass Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists and the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, which publishes The Rural Blog. The awards will be presented at an Oct. 12 dinner.

Larry Craig, who died in 2011, was a Baptist minister who took up journalism because he loved to write. At the Green River Republican in Morgantown, the night after he was offered a list of people willing to sell their votes, someone shot through a front window of his office. He got his gun and spent the night there, earning him the appellation "pistol-packing preacher-publisher." His watchdog work extended to the general public; he published names he found on trash at illegal dumps. He loved to tweak politicians, and others prone to self-importance, and could be both deft and blunt. After he became a journalism teacher and told WKU's student newspaper that the Ku Klux Klan was a "putrid cancer on the body of America," a Klan member and sympathizer burned his church.

Craig said in 2009 that one man told him “He couldn’t see how I could raise hell all week and then preach against hell on Sunday,” but he said both professions prize truth, justice and accountability. David Hawpe, former editor of The Courier-Journal, who succeeded Craig as Kentucky Press Association president, said when his friend died at 62, of liver failure, that he was “a special person who actually was an intellectual, sophisticated guy hiding in a country preacher's persona." His first editor, Al Smith, for whom the award is named, called him “one of the most unforgettable editors I ever knew.”

Ryan Craig bought the Todd County Standard in 2005 after working at daily and weekly newspapers in the area. He transformed the paper into an example of excellent reporting, editing and presentation. When it won its first General Excellence award from KPA, he heard from Uncle Larry, he recalls: “He called me and told me I was putting out a great newspaper,” then said, “Now they know you can do a great job, turn the heat up to boil and see what happens.”

In 2011, The Standard investigated the murder of a girl in foster care in a home where abuse had been substantiated, and used open-records laws to uncover serious flaws in the Kentucky social-services system. It went to court to have the girl's files made public when state officials tried to cover up her case. The newspaper’s investigation, along with stories in the state’s two largest dailies, helped lead to the resignation of the cabinet secretary, the retirement of the social-services commissioner, legislative hearings and a governor-appointed panel to examine child-abuse deaths and near-deaths, Todd Circuit Clerk Mark Cowherd wrote in his nomination of Craig. (Read more)

Weekly publisher wins fight against coal-ash landfill

Publisher/landowner Dink NeSmith in the Altamaha River. (NNA photo by Fred Bennett)

A community crusade led by a weekly newspaper "fought off the efforts of a Fortune 500 solid waste giant that proposed to dump millions of tons of coal ash in a local landfill," Teri Saylor reports for the National Newspaper Association.

The story of the Jesup Press-Sentinel and publisher Dink NeSmith, who owns several other papers and 4,000 acres along the Altamaha River, two-thirds of it in conservation easements, was most recently told by Dan Chapman of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, a former reporter for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

“When I first heard mention of coal ash in Wayne County I said, ‘Whoa. Then no. Then hell no. We don’t want that in our river’,” NeSmith told Chapman. “We threw our heart into the fight and our wallets followed. I have never seen the community more riled up.”

"NeSmith bankrolled much of the coal ash fight and wrote scores of scathing editorials in opposition. The company killed the project earlier this year," Chapman reports. His story is one of five in a series, with seven videos, on the Altamaha (pronounced al-ta-ma-HA).


Republic Services "had won enough battles to consider a small town like Jesup would be a pushover. But Republic had never tangled with newspaper owner, Dink NeSmith, and the power of a feisty small-town newspaper," Saylor writes. He got former president Jimmy Carter to write Microsoft's Bill Gates, "who owns millions of shares of Republic stock. . . . Gates wrote back two months later with promises to ask Republic Services to look into it." That was in August 2016; in April 2017, Republic dropped its plans. NeSmith, who had said his battle was one of David vs. Goliath, also corresponded with farmer-environmentalist-author Wendell Berry, who wrote him a congratulatory note with a P.S.: "David won."

Saylor provides background: "Jesup, the seat of Wayne County, is home to 12,000 residents, and located about 40 miles inland from the Atlantic Ocean in southeast Georgia. Wayne County’s landmass is mostly swampy coastal plain and piney forestland. The Altamaha River flows along the northern border of Wayne County . . . It is an ecologically sensitive area, inhabited by at least 120 species of rare or endangered plants and animals, reporter Derby Waters wrote in an email." NeSmith calls the river "the Amazon of the South."

N.C. farm experimenting with ways to raise antibiotic-free hogs and decrease farm runoff

Straw is used to soak up urine and feces
(North Carolina Health News photo by Gave Rivin)

Researchers at an experimental farm in Goldsboro, N.C., hope to "show how hogs can be raised without antibiotics in a way that grants them enough space to roam—and that keeps their waste out of open-air lagoons," Gabe Rivin reports for North Carolina Health News. The 142-animal operation is part-research facility, part-demonstration for the Center for Environmental Farming Systems, and a research center run by North Carolina State University, North Carolina Agricultural & Technical State University and the state's Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services.

North Carolina, second only to Iowa in pork production, has 8.8 million pigs, mostly in the eastern part of the state, Rivin writes. "To raise such a large number of pigs, many farms rely on concentrated animal feeding operations, or CAFOs. These facilities raise animals efficiently and economically. Yet with such large numbers of animals, they can also produce an abundant amount of feces and urine. Many large-scale farms store this waste in open-air lagoons or in pits and then spray the treated waste on nearby fields. But this practice has raised researchers’ and residents’ concerns."

One way researchers have cut down on waste is through straw beds, Rivin writes. "The straw is used to soak up the pigs’ urine and feces. It’s how the farmers manage the animals’ waste, and it serves as an alternative to a lagoon system. Eventually, it can also be used as a fertilizer for crops." One drawback to the farm is that raising antibiotic, cage-free animals requires paying closer attention to the animals, which means increased time and labor for workers.

500,000 U.S. homes lack sewage disposal systems; problem especially bad in rural Black Belt

Lowndes County, Alabama
(Wikipedia map)

About 500,000 U.S. homes—mostly in poor, rural areas—lack basic plumbing, Sabrina Tavernise reports for The New York Times. Numbers are especially high in some areas of the Black Belt, "so called more for its soil than its demographics." In Lowndes County, Alabama, one of the poorest counties in the nation, only half the population is on municipal sewers and a University of South Alabama survey found that "about 35 percent of homes had septic systems that were failing, with raw sewage on the ground. Another 15 percent had nothing."

Many residents are unable to afford to pay thousands of dollars for septic systems, Tavernise writes. Another problem is that the hard clay soil in this county is bad for burying things—in particular, septic tanks. Lacking a septic tank, many residents instead run a plastic pipe from their toilet under their yards and into the woods behind their houses.

Parrish Pugh, an official with the Alabama Department of Public Health, said the problem with that is that state law "forbids the use of 'insanitary sewage collection,' and the responsibility for that rests squarely with the homeowner," Tavernise writes. "Resisting is not only illegal, but could have health consequences: Raw sewage can taint drinking water and cause health problems." He told Tavernise, “My parents had a pipe that ran into the woods, and that’s good enough for me. But we didn’t know as much about disease back then. People are more educated nowadays. They are more concerned.”

Tavernise writes, "The state health department begs, cajoles, and eventually cites people who have problems and do not fix them. In the early 2000s, the authorities even tried arresting people. That prompted a public outcry and the practice soon stopped, but one person spent a weekend in jail and others were left with criminal records. The department cited about 700 people in the 12 months that ended in March, often because someone complained."

Rural Oregon residents say plan to close garbage transfer stations could lead to illegal dumping

Hundreds of residents in rural areas of Lane County, Oregon (Wikipedia map) have expressed concern that a county proposal to save money by closing rural transfer stations will inconvenience rural residents and lead to an increase in illegal dumping, Saul Hubbard reports for The Register-Guard. The Lane County Board of Commissioners proposed closing eight of the counties 16 garbage transfer stations in an attempt to trim $1.5 million in annual costs from the county’s waste management system. The stations are where rural residents who don’t have doorstep garbage service take their trash and recyclables.

Several commissioners responded Tuesday to public complaints by stressing that the transfer stations need to remain open, Hubbard writes. Instead of closing the stations, they have suggested raising "garbage tipping and recycling rates at all 16 transfer stations, including the heavily used Glenwood Central Receiving Station, while holding steady the rates at the county’s Short Mountain landfill, where many commercial haulers take trash."

"That strategy essentially would require ­anyone who uses a transfer station to help cover the extra cost of keeping all 16 stations open," Hubbard writes. "County staff calculated that rates at all 16 transfer stations would have to increase by 11.3 percent, or an extra $8.64 per ton, to generate $500,000 in new annual revenue."

Photographer spends six years documenting Okla. town's fight against coal ash from nearby plant

Red dot on map of Oklahoma is the town of Bokoshe.

"The people of Bokoshe, Okla., breathe coal ash being dumped nearby every day. They believe it's causing widespread health problems and a rise in cancer deaths," Inside Climate News reports.

Bokoshe, a town of 500, is near a coal-fired power plant near the Arkansas border. "Its toxic byproduct, coal ash, is trucked daily to a nearby dump, and when the wind blows through town, that ash rains down on its residents," ICN reports. "They believe it is to blame for the asthma and cancer that runs rampant there." The dump is not covered or lined. A third of Bokoshe's residents don't have health insurance and 40 percent have incomes below the poverty line.

Carlan Tapp

Photographer Carlan Tapp has been documenting the story for six years. He recalled his first visit: "The street is full of light gray coal ash. I'd been around the stuff enough to recognize it. This is toxic material and it's lining the streets. . . . I've seen sixth-grade kids where over half of them have asthma and there's a locker full of inhalers. The trucks would be so dirty running from the power plant into town that the stuff would just be blowing off of them."

ABC News reported on the controversy in 2011. The Rural Blog did in 2010.

California county paying thousands of dollars each year to clean up large trash items from rural roads

A familiar story is rearing its ugly head in Northern California, where rural roads in Sonoma County—about an hour north of San Fransciso—have become dumping grounds for people looking to discard large trash items like mattresses, refrigerators, furniture and even a boat, Julie Johnson reports for The Press Democrat. "Most Fridays, a Sonoma County probation crew drives around collecting large items discarded illegally along the county’s picturesque rural roads." Janine Crocker, a staffer with the Sonoma County roads department, told Johnson, "They’re all over the county. It’s everywhere." (Democrat photo by Christopher Chung: Trash dumped on a road in front of a Sonoma County rural business)

The county pays nearly $11,000 each year to discard items properly at the dump, Johnson writes. "In 2009, the county posted signs and six motion-detector surveillance cameras in the worst spots with a $500,000 grant from the California Integrated Waste Management Board to catch violators. It also started a website, which has since been deactivated, to educate the public about illegal dumping." At the time, the county estimated the total cost of "cleaning up the steady stream of trash being dumped along waterways and roads was $250,000 per year." A current estimate was not available. (Read more)

Renewable energy market shifts from biomass to solar, pinching Calif. farmers and biomass plants

Biomass waste is deposited at a waste-to-
energy plant. (Photo by Geoffrey Mohan)

As California almond growers bulldoze orchards due to drought, plants that make electricity from waste biomass "are folding in rapid succession, unable to compete with heavily subsidized solar farms, many of which have sprouted up amid the fields and orchards of the San Joaquin Valley," reports Geoffrey Mohan of the Los Angeles Times.

Almond processor and grower Paul Parreira "is running out of dirt roads where he can spread ground-up almond shells, even as he expands a one-megawatt solar array on six acres of his family's property in Los Banos," Mohan writes. "The waste-to-energy facilities where Parreira used to send about 50,000 tons of shells per year are vanishing. Six have closed in just two years, the latest in Delano, which shut down Thursday, after San Diego Gas & Electric ended its power-purchase agreement."

California had about 60 biomass plants in the 1980s, but hit the skids with deregulation of the state's energy grid, cheaper natural gas and expiration of long-term contracts and a state subsidy. The industry is now down to 25 plants, and seeking help from lawmakers in Sacramento.

The vanishing market for biomass waste may mean more open burning of it in the valley, which is allowed "if farmers do not have an economically feasible alternative," Executive Director Seyed Sadredin told the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District board last month. (Read more)

For series, reporter travels 300 miles by canoe to get firsthand feel of impact of Ohio River tributary

The Kentucky Center for Public Service Journalism has published a series on the challenges of the Licking River, a 303-mile tributary of the Ohio River in Northern and Eastern Kentucky and Central Ohio. For the series, reporter Andy Mead and a guide traveled the waters in an aluminum canoe to experience "the good, the bad, the ugly and the spectacular of a river that runs through nearly every culture, geography, economy, environment and society known to its home state. (Mead photo: The upper Licking River cuts a winding path through rocky, wooded terrains as it spills out of Eastern Kentucky on a 300-mile journey to the Ohio River)

"Along the way Mead talked to dozens of experts—from ecologists, scientists and environmentalists to historians, farmers and fisherman—and met dozens of real Kentuckians whose lives are entwined with the river," he reports.

While Mead saw plenty of wildlife, he writes, "We saw too much trash: motor oil bottles, hair spray cans, milk jugs, glass jars with lids (that made them buoyant), broken coolers, a motorcycle helmet, a soccer goal. The single most-common trashy item was the plastic soft drink bottle. Most of them probably had been tossed out of a car or truck window into a roadside ditch before being washed into a creek and then the river. There was a smaller but significant number of old refrigerators, washing machines and other discarded appliances. And tires, tires, tires. We should have kept a running count of tires."

The Licking River, which supports fishing and other tourist activities in Kentucky and Ohio, got its name "because the salty water left deposits that attracted animals as far back as when wooly mammoths and ground sloths roamed the land more than 10,000 years ago," Mead writes. "Marc Hult, a retired U.S. Geological Survey hydrologist who lives beside the Licking, said that’s because the river is fed by groundwater that was an ocean 450 million years ago."

"In 1807, President Thomas Jefferson sent Gen. William Clark to collect prehistoric animal bones from what now is Big Bone Lick State Park. The mission has been called the first paleontological expedition financed by the young government of the U.S.," Mead writes.