The garbage audit we'd really like to see
The Portland city auditor released an audit report yesterday on the rates charged for garbage service in town. It's a fairly bland document, officially posted here and summarized by the O here.
Unfortunately, the audit didn't answer, or even ask, a lot of questions about the Portland garbage ordeal that we'd like to see addressed somewhere, by somebody. Like these:
1. Exactly where does the money we pay to our garbage hauler go? To which government does he or she pay fees? To which private companies? How are those rates set?
2. What do transfer station operators and landfill operators pay or receive for their part of the process?
3. Is it true that most or all the compost material currently being generated in Portland is being trucked all the way to Seattle and Yakima for processing?
4. How many more (or fewer) truck miles are being logged as a result of Portland's new food waste program?
5. Which private companies own the compost they produce from Portland yard debris and food slop? Where do they sell it? How much of a profit are they making on it?
6. Is organized crime a major influence over garbage collection and disposal in Portland, the way it has always been up and down the East Coast?
Addressing these issues might win an enterprising auditor or reporter a Pulitzer Prize. Then again, it might get his or her kneecaps broken. Don't hold your breath waiting for answers.
| Posted at 1:57 PM | Permalink |
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Comments (3)
Broken knee caps would be just a warning, I think.
Posted by portland native | June 20, 2012 2:18 PM
... sounds like the boy is out of Joisey but childhood DownNeck is not out of the boy
Things are done different here, by others.
With the legacy of land Out West -- "where you can pee right in the stream,
and that's important" (Firesign Theater) -- from old logging camps to the modern municipal mashup, if you got garbage you just toss it out there on the land someplace, there's lotsa land.
Audit of garbage hauling asks 2 questions:
1) What total tonnage was hauled?
2) What's the total cost for that?
1) divided by 2) gives Tons per Dollars, T/$, and if the ratio sounds reasonable then end of audit. Unless you would like to bid to haul it yourself for less.
Just haul it away and toss it out there any ol' place.
The 'others' (NOT Italian cartage & drayage supervisory engineers) here in Every Man's Land ... (wait for it) ... are Mormons. So whatcha gotcher mormon mafia, righ'cher. And search for explanation among "Howard Hughes staff aides," "preferred Secret Service and CIA recruits squeaky clean Mormons," "every American family tree included in Mormon database 'forest'," or perhaps, "who owns casinos in Vegas."
Like eastern seaboard Italians, career placement in mormon mafia is by nepotism and a Who-you-know network, but Mormons hold quantitative advantage in arranging jobs by nepotism owing to countless connections among multiple mothers and maybe millions of cousins.
Although they might sometimes cancel each other out if one mother says, "be a doctor," and another one of your mothers says, "don't be a doctor." ... oops, no. wait, I lapsed into jewish mafia talk there for a minute. but probably same same.
Did you know that Mormons never endorsed the Christian principles embedded in the July 4 1776 Constitutional founding bedrock of this country? Because Mormon wasn't invented until 1824. (By a 19-yr-old 'stoner' to impress his girlfriend, using names and lore he read in boy's adventure books which recounted the tales and exploits of British bounder Cap't Kidd in 1700 sailing around here, the cargo landing and auction yard in the midst of the commerce routes of exotic Arabian pirateers ... and Cap't Kidd got a parrot ... but waay more interesting in Capt Kidd's adventures, (as seen by 19-yr-old Joseph Smith, Jr.), was the harem-fulls of wives which Arab slave traders acquired
... J.Smith jr. (if that's his real name) had to work with what was available -- (not nubians), the knickerbocker daughters of Erie Canal workmen around Palmyra, N.Y. 1825. oops again, I digress 200 yrs.
Jack, your garbage 'audit' questions don't reach people's lives and touch people's minds because they aren't sexy. Here're questions that GRAB headlines:
- were there any unlawful abortions dropped in dumpsters that ended up
in the landfill?
(like crime-fighting 'do-gooders' dismembered in Joisey landfills)
- were there any 'bad' (past sale date) organ harvests from OHSU O.R.'s or hauled back from Kosovo or Iraq, disposed of in the landfill?
(like the Oil War body bags flown in to Dover AFB at midnight, cremated, and buried in Maryland landfills or 3-deep per plot in Arlington Nationalism Cemetery)
- who hauls the radioactive Fukishima flotsam away from the Oregon coast? where?
(like the nine-eleven-op demolitions' body parts secreted away to Joisey landfills)
See? You have to 'sex up' the intelligence to get traction with facts.
Only realize that, out here where deer and antelope roam downrange in the remote drone test-flight zone, and seldom is heard a disclosure word, to get anyone to take the garbage out "a million dollars is no problem."
Posted by Tenskwatawa | June 20, 2012 5:18 PM
How about what will happen to the soil we grow our food on, if meat and ?? are thrown in with our yard debris? The Recology website I posted earlier had stated that food waste is prohibited in the yard debris. Is that why the trucks now need to drive further?
Where are the scientists on this?
Matters like this are too important for career politicians to be making decisions not based on science, but based on whatever or denial, and at some point these political decisions do come back to haunt/harm us, such as the Fukushima event.
Posted by clinamen | June 22, 2012 8:45 AM