{"id":36768,"date":"2018-09-20T13:30:00","date_gmt":"2018-09-20T20:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/opinion\/whats-really-going-on-at-king-county-solid-waste\/"},"modified":"2018-09-20T13:30:00","modified_gmt":"2018-09-20T20:30:00","slug":"whats-really-going-on-at-king-county-solid-waste","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/opinion\/whats-really-going-on-at-king-county-solid-waste\/","title":{"rendered":"What’s really going on at King County Solid Waste?"},"content":{"rendered":"
By Philipp Schmidt-Pathmann<\/strong>\/For the Reporter<\/em><\/p>\n The Kent Reporter published an article, “King County considers expansion of the Cedar Hills Landfill,” on Sept. 7. Having been a part of this process for more than 20 years now, I have some fundamental problems regarding the accuracy of information and the overall decision process taking place.<\/p>\n My team and I were part of the Waste-to-Energy (WTE) study that was submitted last October. It is a strong claim to make, but we believe that from the beginning of the WTE study, the King County Solid Waste Division deliberately used unrealistic projections to drive up the cost of WTE and identify landfilling as the preferred disposal method.<\/p>\n Our team of international experts kept emphasizing the need for the county’s waste division to focus on the waste management hierarchy: prevention, re-use, recycling, recovery of energy and materials (WTE) and last, disposal\/landfill and conservation of resources: land, groundwater, materials and energy.<\/p>\n We were explicitly told that this information was of no relevance and to exclude it. In contradiction to King County Executive Dow Constantine’s 70 percent recycling goal by 2020, the recycling rate was to remain at 57 percent.<\/p>\n Until recently, the landfill expansion was said to cost $325 million, and WTE $1.4 billion. A county insider stated that the landfill cost is very speculative, as is the WTE cost. due to the futuristic time frame and parameters given. The landfill cost could likely double or triple to $650 million or even $975 million, and the WTE capital cost, if built today and based on a system that would focus more on waste avoidance and recycling, could be as low as half of the $1.4 billion, around $700 million. So where do the $241 million and the $1.8 billion come from? They seem to be nothing more than the fabrication of a biased process.<\/p>\n Countries like Germany and Denmark, among many others, have clearly shown that phasing out landfilling pays off. Germany is known for the highest recycling rate of any country in the world. Germany, with more than 80 million people, landfills less than 200,000 tons waste, of which all is pretreated, meaning it no longer reacts with the environment. That is less than one-quarter of what we currently landfill in King County with 2 million people (900,000 tons of untreated, reactive waste).<\/p>\n