Braille Live

Nevada Community Expresses

Asbestos Concerns
Winnemucca, Nevada – September 16, 2009

A proposal to dump San Francisco’s garbage in a landfill outside of Las Vegas has divided the local community. The town of Winnemucca, Nevada is home to the Jungo Road landfill, a dumping ground that may soon be used to dispose of 4,000 tons of garbage, hauled five days a week into Humboldt County for nearly a century to come.

“There is no amount of money that makes it worth taking all that garbage,” local Tami Vetter said. “The more I think of that amount of garbage, the more terrified I get. What we are going to have is a poisonous soup. We are setting ourselves up for health problems.”

San Francisco-based Recology would be doing the dumping, assuming they get the needed permits.

“One of the things I have learned about Recology is they go for putting landfills in rural communities and usually get their way,” Vetter said. “We have trusted our county officials to look out for us, and they haven’t.”

But Adam Alberti, a spokesman for Recology, said his company is trustworthy, and has an 89-year history of operating safe landfills. “We don’t want to jam it down their throats,” Alberti said. “It will not pose any health risks. We are dealing with household waste. We are working to build trust in the community.”

But Vetter and other locals are concerned about the dumping of tires and asbestos at the site. “What happens to a landfill like this when the liner under it eventually leaks?” she asked. “All liners leak and that poisonous soup leaks into the water table.”

Asbestos will be wrapped in coating required by environmental regulations before being disposed of. And according to Alberti, dealing with asbestos safely can prevent fatal diseases such as mesothelioma cancer. “Asbestos can be handled safely,” he said. “Like it or not, asbestos is in this world.”

“Are they really looking out for us, for our desert?” Vetter asked. “Are we so poor or greedy that we would stoop to the level of taking a risk for the sake of money?”