
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, March 19, 1990                   TAG: 9003222336
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

SLOPPY ANSWER

WESTERN Virginia Congressmen Frederick Boucher and James Olin have crafted a bill to empower states to ban imported garbage. The idea is to prevent densely populated regions from dumping their trash in more thinly populated places such as rural parts of Olin's 6th and Boucher's 9th districts.

It's happening in the 6th, at the controversial Kim-Stan operation in Alleghany County. Boucher fears it could happen at places in the 9th. If the bill (pending in a House subcommittee) ever becomes law, and if Virginia takes advantage of its new power by passing a state ban, another Kim-Stan presumably could not arise.

That no doubt would be applauded by most Western Virginians. Moreover, the bill would help the nation's solid-waste problem if, as Boucher hopes, it would stimulate recycling efforts in garbage-exporting locales.

But the Boucher-Olin approach has its dangers.

One is that it might blind residents of relatively low-trash areas, such as Western Virginia, to the fact that solid-waste disposal is a national problem. Of course Boston's trash, or New York City's trash, or Philadelphia's trash are Boston's problem, and New York City's problem, and Philadelphia's problem. But in an interdependent national economy, they to some extent are everybody else's problem, too.

A second danger is that the Boucher-Olin approach might make Western Virginians forget that their own garbage is no better than anyone else's. Ensuring that landfills are environmentally safe is no less important if the waste is generated in the Roanoke Valley, Covington or Pulaski than if it comes from another state.

Perhaps an outright ban on imported garbage, a ban possible only under the kind of congressional legislation that Boucher and Olin are pursuing, is the best answer. Still, it's a sloppy answer.

In attempting to counter the threat of unclean landfills' burying out-of-state trash on inappropriate sites, it should be kept in mind: The basic problems are the "unclean" and "inappropriate" part, and only indirectly the "out-of-state" part.

by CNB