A Portland Resident
and Lay Person’s View about the Proposed Digest er
I
am a third generation resident of Portland.
I grew up in the Neighborhood in the 50’s and 60’s and know from first hand
experience the attention residents in this part of Louisville receive from the
city as far as garbage pick-up, clean and well- maintained streets and
sidewalks as well as the general attitude that Portland is the neighborhood
where all the “trash” goes. My parents and other neighbors were always busy
cleaning up and doing the best they could to keep our “side of the street
clean.”
I
have returned to Portland
after years away and have become actively involved in all the activities going
on to revitalize our neighborhood and uplift our image. I have been actively
following the efforts of a group of people interested in creating the area
known as Food port that will impact my neighborhood. When I attended the first
informational meeting at Western
Middle School, I was
fascinated with the idea of the digester – a contraption that will take food
waste and create energy from the methane gas produced.
Wow! I thought. I
remember the stinky smells from garbage cans and areas around the River that
people used to dump their food waste when I was a kid. I didn’t like those stinky
smells in my neighborhood. Technology can be wonderful when used wisely. I know
all too well the dangers of misuse of the internet and all that has brought
into our society, so I appreciated the Food port representatives setting up
informational meetings and answering all the questions directed to them
honestly and straightforwardly. I was excited about the possibility of creating
energy (clean energy) from garbage. I had read all kinds of reports of this
already in use in Japan and
countries in Europe. Therefore, I was stunned
to read the article in the Courier-Journal
a few weeks ago that said the digester was being suspended because of
strong neighborhood resistance on the idea that this was just another way of
“dumping” on poor neighborhoods.
I thought about
that a lot as I was volunteering with PUP (Picking up Portland)
and picking up lots of food waste that consumers here in Portland were dumping onto our streets and
vacant lots. If we don’t want to be dumped on, then stop dumping on ourselves
and our neighbors and expect somebody else to carry your waste to a landfill
that may or may not be in your neighborhood.
Like all citizens, I am concerned about air
pollution from chemicals, so I did a little research about the chemicals being
released into our air, water and soil – that are the major culprits. I also
read about some of the technologies and methods being used and studied to
combat this problem. I have copied and pasted some articles I found on the
internet for you to read. This is not overly technical. It is easy to read and
understand. After reading, I hope you will discover ways that you can help as
an individual and better understand the things that are being done by our
government and its agents to help us all.
“Carbon dioxide (CO
2)
is the primary greenhouse gas emitted through human activities. In 2013, CO
2 accounted for about 82% of all U.S. greenhouse
gas emissions from human activities. Carbon dioxide is naturally present in the
atmosphere as part of the Earth's carbon cycle (the natural circulation of
carbon among the atmosphere, oceans, soil, plants, and animals). Human
activities are altering the carbon cycle—both by adding more CO
2 to the atmosphere and by influencing the ability of
natural sinks, like forests, to remove CO
2 from the
atmosphere. While CO
2 emissions come from a
variety of natural sources, human-related emissions are responsible for the
increase that has occurred in the atmosphere since the industrial revolution.”
[1]
The
main human activity that emits CO
2 is the
combustion of fossil fuels (coal, natural gas, and oil) for energy and
transportation, although certain industrial processes and land-use changes also
emit CO
2. On the individual level this means: driving, electrical energy use and consumption of manufactured products and processed foods.
What can individuals do to reduce this? Reduce (driving, turn off lights or
energy using appliances when not in use). Reuse (Stop throwing away so much,
especially one-time use plastics). It takes fossil fuels to manufacture that
plastic bottle you drink your water from and the plastic also creates noxious
gas as it is left to decompose on the sidewalk, in yards or in a landfill.
Recycle -Stop throwing away materials that can be reused.
“Methane gas is also dangerous to the environment and its
percentages in the atmosphere have increased since the Industrial Revolution.
What is the main source of methane in our environment? “About 60 percent of
global methane emissions stem from human activity—aside from landfills, the
chief anthropogenic culprits are natural gas production and use, coal mines,
and "enteric fermentation" (the polite term for the burps of
livestock).” Therefore, what can humans do to decrease the amount of methane
being produced by our garbage? “As a consumer, you can help a minuscule amount
by reducing the amount of waste you send to landfills. But the most promising
solutions aren't on the end-user level. The Lantern mentioned one such remedy a
few weeks back:
capturing methane
from landfills and then using it to generate electricity or to supply
gas-hungry industrial operations. In the agricultural realm, those cow burps
can be made less methane-rich by fiddling with the animals' diets; Australian
scientists contend, for example, that adding cottonseed oil to livestock feed
can reduce each cow's methane emissions by up to 30 percent. (The typical cow
belches forth about a third of a pound of methane per day.)”
These are not a bunch of scientific
charts with numbers and exponential s and complicated math. I have simply
written down the things I considered when I first heard about the digest er. I
still don’t know if it is perfectly safe, however, in my simple mind, I think
the dangers of the digest er are far less than what I have heard about nuclear
waste and pipelines. I do, however, prefer a machine that takes garbage that
has been dumped and puts it into a machine that scrubs it and turns it into
energy or fertilizer to breathing in the methane from careless dumping of
waste. This is much more preferable in my opinion than living in a neighborhood
where I have to walk past and smell toxic cigarette butts and food and
container waste left on the sidewalk or vacant lots or clogging our drains.
In
Flanders fields the poppies blow