Avoidable Deaths: I love this time of year -- the leaves changing colors, the dazzling sunsets, the smell of the air. But one of the few things I categorically do NOT like about autumn is that it always produces too many stories like this: Police in Homer, Alaska, had to kill a trash-eating bear last week because the animal was becoming too aggressive and its encounters with people too frequent and dangerous to let it keep living.
Sad episodes like this are preventable if people simply take care of their trash the way they should. The Homer article points out that a local sanitation company offers bear-proof trash containers at reduced prices, thanks to a grant from a conservation group: $40 for 32-gallon cans, $50 for 65-gallon ones. Those sound like fair prices to me. More than fair.
Bear-proof garbage bins should not be considered luxuries in places like Homer, Alaska. Far from it; they should probably be required. Shouldn´t they? Maybe that town´s enforcement of its trash laws should be a little stiffer. Or a lot stiffer.
Battle Lines Drawn: The competition for trash hauling contracts in and around Santa Barbara, Calif., was ratcheted up several notches recently when the city´s longtime environmental services director, Stephen MacIntosh, jumped ship and joined Allied Waste Services, one of the area´s two main haulers.
The other big hauler in Santa Barbara is MarBorg Industries. According to the above-linked article from the Santa Barbara Daily Sound, that company´s owner, Mario Borgatello, is raising questions about the propriety of MacIntosh´s dealings with Allied while he still worked for the city, and also about how MacIntosh might use inside information that he gleaned about MarBorg during his time working for the city.
MacIntosh denies Borgatello´s accusations that he acted as a "double agent" when he was on the public payroll, saying he handed off all responsibility related to Allied once he started discussing a contract with them and that city officials expressed no concern about his role while he interviewed for the Allied job.
The Daily Sound says MarBorg and Allied are engaged in a tooth-and-nail battle over territories and contracts in the area, with tens of millions of dollars in public funds at stake. This will be a good contest to keep an eye on.
Pete Fehrenbach is managing editor of Waste & Recycling News.
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