GOVERNMENT
Solid waste disposal gets federal effort Solvingthe problem will take more imagination in a variety of disciplines than air and water pollution combined A sign on the fence of a Toronto junkyard reads: "Help make junkyards beautiful. Throw something lovely away today." For all its attempted wit, the sign points up a fact—that junkyards and other aspects of solid waste disposal are drawing increasing public attention. Accordingly, the Federal Government is organizing itself for a stepped-up attack on the problem, armed with the year-old Solid Waste Disposal Act. Solid waste disposal today lacks the glamor and urgency that surround air and water pollution control. But it's virtually certain that the field will in the future call for more technical imagination and creativity than the other two combined. The challenges involve such disciplines as chemistry; chemical, civil, mechanical, and sanitary engineering; and the application of systems analysis to political, social, and management realities on the state and community levels. The problem boils down to this: Communities are running out of land for disposal of wastes. Meanwhile, the volume of refuse from all sources is rising sharply—170 million tons a year now, 225 million tons by 1975. Technology therefore is being asked to contribute ways of lowering the volume of refuse and converting it into something economically useful. Regions are being challenged to integrate their collection and disposal practices to make the most efficient use of the land. And the government's Office of Solid Wastes (in the Department of Health,
Education, and Welfare) has the task of directing a national effort. A prime example of a metropolis struggling with the buildup of wastes is the San Francisco Bay Area. In this nine-county region of 4.1 million persons, almost 3 million tons of refuse are dumped annually at 77 disposal sites by 83 separate collecting agencies or jurisdictions. Not only is the system uncoordinated and economically inefficient, but the Bay Area is running out of land. Almost two thirds of the available sites are adja-
Trash increases faster than population • •
3501
Millions of tons of refuse millions of people 1
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TIN CANS. Disposal of solid waste is becoming a problem and the pile of cans its symbol as land gets scarce
cent to San Francisco Bay. Water pollution control legislation recently passed by the California state legislature bans further dumping of refuse into the bay. By the year 2000, estimates J. H. Hickey, planning director of the Association of Bay Area Governments, residents and industries will have ejected about 182 million tons of refuse, requiring 318,000 acre feet for disposal. On the basis of currently available sites, he estimates the region will by the year 2000 need about 175,000 more acre feet for disposing its refuse. "In no case, including land and ocean disposal, is waste disposal technology, however advanced, adequate to the needs," says Dr. P. H. McGauhey, director of the Sanitary Engineering Research Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley. "Incineration, which has been widely adopted by major U.S. cities, is largely conceived as a device to reduce the refuse to a minimum volume. Re-examination of the method, both technically and economically, is now suggested by the fact that more than 10,000 U.S. communities recognize air pollution as a local environmental problem. Furthermore, as the percentage of plastics in refuse increases, so does the needed furnace temperature, with resultant shortening of the life of furnace liners. "Landfill techniques, although well established, are still but the crudest form of materials handling. Composting is stalled between the economics of production, the nature of an organi-
Bureau of Mines concentrates on inorganic wastes Solid-waste research program, in-house Projects fiscal ' 6 7 Project summary
Station
Project leader
To produce a clean steel scrap from automobile bodies by controlled heating in a rotary kiln to remove combustible materials and nonferrous metals
Albany Metallurgy Research Center
W. A. Stickney
To develop technically and economically feasible methods for directly utilizing or recovering components of red mud residues of the alumina industry
Albany Metallurgy Research Center
W. A. Stickney
To develop, on a laboratory scale, methods of: recovering useful metals of minerals from waste piles; converting wastes into useful products; or stabilizing waste piles by vegetative growth or other means
Salt Lake City Metallurgy Research Center
K. C. Dean
Use of auto scrap and nonmagnetic taconite ores for the production of marketable magnetic iron oxide concentrates
Twin Cities Metallurgy Research Center
W. M. Mahan
To develop new and improved methods for salvaging metal values from municipal wastes and devise processes for making marketable products
College Park Metallurgy Research Center
Paul Sullivan
Office of Solid Wastes contracts for research f
Contractor
Cost
Aerojet-General Corp.
$60,130
Literature survey of public health related to solid wastes
Purpose
American Public Works Association
$86,523
Development of training courses for public officials
Battelle Memorial Institute
$57,265
A state-of-the-art examination of unit operations and processes of solid-waste disposal
Combustion Engineering, Inc.
$154,032
Technical-economic study of solidwaste disposal needs and practices
University of Minnesota
$26,024
Investigation of the differences in microbiological quality of products from various types of rendering plants
National Academy of Sciences
$10,000
Development of a study protocol of alternate methods of refuse disposal from multifamily, highdensity dwellings
| zation to manage the process, and agricultural uninterest in the product. Disposal at sea, disposal of organic fractions to the sewage treatment plant, disposal of sewage sludge, and long-distance transport are but a few of the inadequately explored problems, technically and economically." Congress gave official recognition to these tasks as a national problem last year when it passed the Waste Disposal Act as an amendment to the Air Pollution Control (Clean Air) Act. The law created the Office of Solid Wastes in H E W and divided responsibility for development of technology between it and the Bureau of Mines in
the Interior Department. The Office of Solid Wastes remains the center of action along the entire trash front, since it guides the national effort. The current budget of the Office of Solid Wastes is $12.5 million. The Bureau of Mines is responsible for dealing creatively with metallurgical and fossil fuel wastes under a $4.3 million fiscal 1967 grant and a contract program, directed by Frank Cservenyak. Solid waste activities aren't exactly a new endeavor for HEW. For years it ran a modest program of surveys and advisory studies in the Public Health Service's old Bureau of State Services, headed by Ralph J. Black. Mr. Black
CHIEF. Wesley E. Gilbertson heads Office of Solid Wastes, believes problem is largely one for systems analysis
is now deputy chief of the elevated program, directed by Wesley E. Gilbertson. Mr. Gilbertson was head of the now-defunct Division of Environmental Engineering and Food Protection. To add to an already confusing story, Mr. Gilbertson will soon be leaving the Federal Government entirely to head environmental health programs for the Pennsylvania State Health Department. Mr. Black, with years of experience in solid waste control, is the logical successor. Meanwhile, the office is caught up in the general reorganization in the Public Health Service and, under another name, will become part of a new Center for Urban and Industrial Health. The center will be placed in Cincinnati sometime next year. Actually, the entire Government is being shaken by reorganization, especially in the environmental sciences. H E W in particular is trying to work out its place in the scheme of things. It seems appropriate, then, that the Office of Solid Wastes occupies Temporary Building R along the south side of the Mall in Washington. But while the building is impermaDEC. 12, 1966 C&EN
51
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nent, the program isn't, because the solid waste problem isn't going to be easily disposed of. The task requires a national effort—in science, engineering, and management techniques. Mr. Gilbertson's first order of priority has been to develop a coordinated operation within his own agency. Since solid waste disposal is largely a matter of systems analysis, he sees little reason to depart from that concept in running his own operation. He breaks down the task of the Office of Solid Wastes in these ways: • Overcome years of professional, technical, and political neglect that has impeded recognition of the problem. • Encourage industrial development of technical know-how. Firms are now beginning to make their own investments in new technology, independent of Office of Solid Wastes funding. Mr. Gilbertson, a sanitary engineer, cites Aerojet General, Combustion Engineering, Du Pont, and Libbey-Owens-Ford as industrial pacemakers in waste disposal progress. • Mount a bigger demonstration program. "We've got to move beyond the pilot stage if we're to get at basic economic problems involving utility." A typical project, now under design, involves setting an aesthetically designed incinerator in a recreational park and using trash as a fuel to heat pool water for swimming. In the cold months, energy from combustion would freeze water for skating. • Coordinate activities with industry. "Firms obviously have their own problems, but they have the key to many solutions." Some industries that were not particularly involved are now showing interest. For example, Mr. Gilbertson told C&EN that a transportation company is currently working on the design of specialized vehicles that would process waste while carrying it to distant disposal areas. Chemical engineering could become heavily involved through cycling and reproc-
essing wastes enroute or at the plant. • Define relationships with air and water pollution. A fact generally overlooked is that as air and water pollution control gains momentum, the solid waste problem accelerates. Solids are simply the by-product of pollution control and ways must be found to handle them. Moreover, consideration of solid waste disposal must be inserted more effectively into all efforts to control environmental contamination. • Achieve regional coordination. Communities have long been battling each other over such matters as incinerator sites and dump ground priorities. "Its time they get together, whatever the political costs, and achieve the kind of economy that only comes with combined operations." • Establish comprehensiveness. "The tendency in the past was to think about waste problems as back door garbage. Any future systems will have to make provision for urban trash, industrial refuse, agricultural wastes, and demolition rubble. Thus, the grants and contracts program of the Office of Solid Wastes is aimed at developing competence on a broad front (see table for examples) and it looks ahead to an in-house effort when the operation moves to Cincinnati. Meanwhile, the Bureau of Mines is developing its own program independently. A possible reason why the bureau's program doesn't have a more integrated place in Mr. Gilbertson's systems scheme is the difference in departments—HEW and Interior—and the growing rivalry between them in environmental priorities. Nevertheless, Mr. Cservenyak forges ahead, trying to solve problems posed by auto hulks and refuse from natural resources. His guiding philosophy is to seek out economic and resource factors that work against efficient disposal, and support scientific and engineering research directed at "disposing of a
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