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Image courtesy of EPA
(c) Steffen and Paul Schmidt, 2013. This blog post is the draft chapter from our forthcoming book Coatsal Issues, Coastal Solutions.
One of the topics we revisit constantly in
or classes on coastal policy is marine and coastal debris.
It is one of the consistent issues that
interest us from a scientific point of view. It’s also a major concern for
ocean and coastal managers.
Day to day human activity produces lots of trash and debris
on the best of days. We know about all the plastic bottles, straws, cans and a
host of other “stuff” that human beings discard and that washes out to sea and
unto beaches all over the US and the world. That’s at the level of concern
about “litter” along roads and highways, a problem we have been attacking for
decades now with education campaigns, fines for littering, and very organized
cleanup efforts. We even have “adopt a highway” programs where clubs and organizations
can adopt a stretch of read and periodically go out and collect and properly
dispose of trash. And of course there are beach cleanup programs too numerous
to itemize here.
But then we have the massive and truly challenging debris volume
that’s created by storms, tornado's, earthquakes, tsunamis and hurricanes. Here
the scale is massive and the cleanup and disposal a true challenge. Only
professionals and hundreds of millions of dollars can attack this scale.
Hurricane Katrina created roughly 100 million cubic yards
of debris spread out specifically over the city of New Orleans and surrounding
towns, the state of Louisiana, Texas, Mississippi, Alabama and a number of
other states.
It’s not just this massive volume of trash
and damage that’s daunting. It’s the content of the debris that poses such an
enormous challenge.
Human beings produce all kinds of stuff that,
when used appropriately and according to label instructions, can be at least tolerably
safe. When this all suddenly “goes wild” as I call it, there is deep, deep
trouble.
In the past we used wood to heat, cook, and
light. That was biodegradable to the nth degree. Now, just think of those new
and energy efficient CFL light bulbs that we have all been using more and more and
that, if the federal government has its way, will be the only bulbs produced
and sold. What if you break one of these?
Here are the full EPA instructions:
What to Do if a Compact Fluorescent Light
Bulb Breaks
Fluorescent light bulbs contain a very
small amount of mercury sealed within the glass tubing. EPA recommends the
following clean up and disposal guidelines:
- Open a window and
leave the room (restrict access) for at least 15 minutes.
- Remove all materials
you can without using a vacuum cleaner.
- Wear disposable rubber gloves, if
available (do not use your bare hands).
- Carefully scoop up the fragments
and powder with stiff paper or cardboard.
- Wipe the area clean with a damp
paper towel or disposable wet wipe.
- Sticky tape (such as duct tape)
can be used to pick up small pieces and powder.
- Place all cleanup
materials in a plastic bag and seal it.
- If
your state permits you to put used or broken fluorescent light bulbs in
the garbage, seal the bulb in two plastic bags and put into the outside
trash (if no other disposal or recycling options are available).
- Wash
your hands after disposing of the bag.
- The first time you vacuum
the area where the bulb was broken, remove the vacuum bag once done
cleaning the area (or empty and wipe the canister) and put the bag and/or
vacuum debris, as well as the cleaning materials, in two sealed plastic
bags in the outdoor trash or protected outdoor location for normal
disposal.
Now imagine hundreds of thousands of these
bulbs broken by Superstorm Sandy!
WLTX.com reports that the Environmental Protection Agency has pulled 90,000
potentially hazardous items from the New York City rubble alone. Go through
your house and look at all the stuff there is. Household cleaners with
warnings, propane tanks, oil and gas containers in the garage, electronics full
of exotic and highly dangerous metals, and those mercury infused light bulbs
CFL’s mentioned above that are intended to save the environment.
US News.NBCNews.com reported that at a Queens New York
park the EPA
workers “don full-body suits and gas masks” and then attack the toxic soup of
debris. Imagine that. A city park so contaminated that it becomes a HAZMAT zone
after a storm! The report said that
these workers then, “… scramble through the piles of debris to pick out hazardous materials
like aerosol cans and electrical appliances. Other EPA workers test the air for
a range of hazards including bacteria, viruses and fungal agents, hazardous
fumes, and lead paint. Workers on the site are drawing on experiences from
Hurricane Katrina and the devastating tornado that hit Joplin, Mo.“ http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/11/17/15240017-sandy-debris-piles-up-at-queens-park-4500-tons-and-counting?lite
Now also
consider the structures of homes and businesses, many of which are old and
probably contain lead paint and asbestos which has now all been broken out of
its confinement and is out there posing an unspeakable threat to coastal
communities, beaches, marshes and the ocean. Add to that common coastal hazard
sites especially boat yards and marinas which have a dense population of
vessels all with fuels and chemicals, and the painting and repair facilities common
to boatyards which are also filled with specific and highly flammable or
poisonous products. There are electric transformers, generators and other
equipment that may be high risk.
Add to that
MASSIVE numbers of trees down which may be sitting and soaking in the toxic
soup discussed here. Those and wood debris from homes 92x4’s, plywood, etc. are
run through gigantic chippers and turned into a product – wood chips. – These
chips are then given away to towns and countries to use in landscaping or sometimes
to individuals for the same use.
The obvious
debris fields, and that’s what these are just like when a pane crashes, are on
thing. Actual communities and neighborhoods are relatively dense debris
locations and you can concentrate a retrieval and disposal force on those
locations. Another problem are remote and unconcentrated areas such as fields,
woods, marshes, estuaries, wetlands, and other locations where huge amounts of
debris has been scattered. Just picture what job retrieval looks like in those
places.
Now comes
part two of this nightmare.
Assuming
that you get all this mass of material collected and sorted where do you put it?
On the best of days we have a real landfill and
waste disposal crisis in the United States. There are books written on this!
For example Earth's Garbage Crisis (What If We Do Nothing?) by Christiane Dorion;
Rush to Burn:
Solving America's Garbage Crisis? By
Newsday Inc.; The Waste Crisis:
Landfills, Incinerators, and the Search for a Sustainable Future,
Hans Y. Tammemagi. “Chapters discuss garbage through the ages,
the age of consumerism and the waste explosion, integrated waste management,
recycling and composting, waste characteristics, alternative disposal methods
(existing and abandoned mines, landfill reclamation to extend the lifespan of
old dumps, ocean dumping, deep-well injection, deep injection of liquid waste
in cement slurry form, sub-seabed disposal), incineration issues, containment
and encapsulation …”
The book, Rubbish! Dirt On Our Hands and Crisis Ahead, by Richard Girling which is
described as, “This is the story of our rubbish [garbage to Americans] —
from the first human bowel movement to the littering of outer space. It is an
investigation of the looming problem of waste in the 21st century — our fridge
mountain; our crumbling sewers; trading waste; packaging waste; the enormity of
our industrial waste; spam emails and new forms of waste; horrors of
incineration . . . And it is an attempt to find a blueprint for our survival:
the way our lives may have to change.”
Yeah it’s that
bad! And it’s that complicated.
This is a
growing problem around the world. If you’ve ever been to islands, say in the
Caribbean or South Pacific, you realize what a daunting challenge waste
disposal has become. When we’ve sailed in these remote places one of the
biggest problems is where to dispose of the boat garbage. In most venues “boat
boys” come by and for a fee will take it away. We all know that they go just
around the bend and dump it on the beach or in the ocean. When we cruisers and
sailors try to dispose of it ourselves the monumental challenge becomes even
more clear.
On the small
Bahamian island of Normans key there is an abandoned resort that once belonged
to legendary Colombian drug cartel leader Carlos Lehder. The property is in
legal dispute. On shore next to the anchorage where the fuselages of crashed
planes that tried to make drug run landings at night still stick out of the
bay, there is a concrete structure. No doubt it was once a waterfront bar and
restaurant from the resort. Inside the sailors have dumped their black plastic
garbage bags because all said it is the least bad place to dispose.
Dumping or
burning used to be the only way anyone disposed of trash.
In Iowa for
example, farmers had a ravine or area by a creek or river that was the junk and
garbage pile. My son used to spend many hours on a nice day at the site near or
farm and dig through, finding and bringing home all kinds of treasure – old
toys, discarded tools, and fancy glass bottles some still with liquid in them.
Who knows what all these sites contained. This was before the words
“ecosystems” and “environmentalism” were invented. It was a time when in the
transition from a world of natural garbage – wood, food scraps, cloth and paper
– we slid almost imperceptibly into a world of chemicals. Only recently did we
discover the disastrous effects those will have on the environment, the health
of animals and plants, and our own well being.
Those who
want to abolish the EPA seem to ignore the fact that their lives and the lives
of future generations would be at terrible risk if someone didn’t look after
the proper management, disposal, or prohibition of these many deadly products.
The EPA may have been overzealous here and there in their enforcement
regulations but overall without a monitor we wouldn’t even have a canary in the
mine to warn us of coming disaster.
To conclude, the crisis of debris, waste, and garbage is
big enough under normal circumstances. Under a sudden crisis scenario such as
Superstorm Sandy it becomes an unimaginable task. And Sandy was only one storm
in a string of very bad coastal storms and we expect that it was not the last.
