It is so true, that we often don’t realize when we have it good, but a recent news report out of the Kansas City area sure should make us open our eyes here in Barton County.
According to the report, “Johnson County residents will pay extra starting in 2012 for pitching too much trash.”
It also explained that the new regulations “will require trash haulers to offer curbside recycling to every resident and charge extra for garbage that exceed the 96-gallon threshold. The new rules also place new restrictions on yard waste.” And that the regulators are taking these actions because Johnson County will run out of landfill space by 2027.
That is discouraging, and if they are just now starting to take action, they will have to take some painful steps to get it done.
Here’s the difference locally:
Thanks to the foresight of our county officials, and, frankly, thanks to hard work and efficient planning by Landfill Manger Mark Witt, we have been able to lead the state in landfill development over the past several years.
Sure, we had to do away with yard trash. After all, do we really want to use up extremely expensive landfill space to accommodate green stuff?
Thanks to local leaders — and in this case, “leader” is the correct term, as opposed to its use on the national level — thanks to them, Barton County has a number of popular and successful composting sites to handle that yard waste.
Recycling, changing landfill cover procedures and other steps have all worked to add to the life of our landfill, and without the steps we see in Johnson County.
A lot of hard work, cooperation and innovation has made our successful changes possible, and we should appreciate all that has been done to make our landfill the envy of the state.
— Chuck Smith