Stop Outsourcing Our Garbage!!!
After three and a half years of public hearings, federal regulatory changes and zoning clearances, Camano is poised to break ground on its new and controversial 65 acre landfill. Angry residents made their voices heard regarding perceived exorbitant transfer station fees while complaints from the gated community of Island Hills concerning obnoxious summer odors wafting up from the odoriferous collection site made the decision all that much more urgent.
In a return to the past, Camano will no longer pay to have its refuse trucked to off-island dumps. Various sites for an intra-island depository were considered over the 42 months of head scratching by numerous county, state and federal agencies, but in the end, a panel comprised of health officials, citizens’ groups and local area water associations voted to purchase the 65 acre tract of ‘nearly useless’ land eight miles south of Elger Bay Store in the island’s virtually uninhabited interior. In a prepared statement, the Camano Recycle and Refuse Committee (CRRC) argued that “given the remote location and relatively non-utilitarian potential for economic development of the land, Camano would be best served if these tracts near the Camano Head were used for on-island disposal of indigenous trash”.
Some committee members, in a separate dissension, worried that hauling recycles from one end of the island back to the north would be exorbitantly expensive, given the distance from the current King County Recycling Station. They voiced concerns about inadequate drainage in clay subsoils as well as vandalism by nearby residents of the South End. “We don’t want to create a Little Cairo of dump pickers down there,” one committee member stated to this Crab Cracker reporter.
Nevertheless, the property has been purchased, permits have been issued and this May bulldozers will begin the arduous task of clearing old growth nettles, clandestine white supremacist enclaves, two abandoned meth labs, a remote county park used and maintained by one elderly volunteer, multiple bottle dumps, illegal residences and a tire dump.
The ad hoc group NOT ON OUR SOUTH END! vowed to continue their lawsuit to stop the new landfill, but Natalie Nimbee, group spokeswoman, admitted they were running dangerously short on time and cash. Their only hope now, she said, was that the Southendomish Tribal Council might weigh in, but so far, they seem reluctant. Chief Net’yl Skratchum stated on the record, “Same crummy deal since the Mabana Treaty of 1918 giving us 50% scrounging rights. Half of what the landgrabbers leave behind…. Thanks, but no thanks.”
Officials indicate the new landfill will meet strict EPA guidelines and should be fully operational by the end of 2015. The site of the current transfer station will be restored to its former natural setting and eventually converted to a county park.
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