When I taught High school in New Rochelle, NY, in the 1970s, my favorite way to get to NYC was not taking the direct highway, but taking the shore road through Pelham to stop for an onion burger and clams on the half shell at that little place along the way, I am thinking Eddie’s, so I could drive by City Island, a place I have always wanted to live.

This drive included a rather odd hill. 

It had not always been there, but a few years before that spot was chosen to be the resting place of Manhattan’s trash. Although knowing the hole would eventually become a small hill, this took place much faster than anticipated and what I drove by was a huge hill into which they stopped adding trash.

Around that same time the city was watching the slow approach, rather return, of sewage with the thickness of peanut butter as it had escaped the currents that were supposed to have contained it as it slowly sank beneath the surface but was now returning home.

A garbage barge containing a huge collection of the city’s trash floated around off the coast unable to come ashore as there was no place for it.

Yes, human waste, biological and material, has played a role in my past in the role of humor or horror depending on your mood when you received the news.

Listening to the progress of the human waste on the morning news often determined what you did not put on your toast.

The only up side was that the hill was in no man’s land and the barge and the blob were out at sea, not near people.

When I moved to New Bedford, I saw the “mountain” off the highway and knew it for what it was, the collected trash of the city that in future years, centuries from now, archaeologists will dig into to learn about those whose trash it is.The problem of these ever growing mountains is not insurmountable if we dealt with the cause of these mountains and not just deal with them.

There is too much disposable trash we are forced to create. Cereal in bags inside boxes, food items wrapped individually in a group package, hard objects with built in obsolescence, and the consumer having to accept the packaging creating trash if they want the product.

We create trash we do not need and are creating mountains with it.

I will not get into it here, but after its hay day as a rich city twice, once with whaling, once with manufacturing, it seems the state of Massachusetts has a grudge against New Bedford and wants to spit on it in the name of their ancestors who did not benefit from New Bedford or Fall River directly. 

I lived on the South and North Shores of Massachusetts consistently or my first 18 years and then sporadically after that, and the negative attitude, the seeming desire to kick a city they were jealous of while it was down has always been there. New Bedford is closer to Rhode Island than Boston, so the state has been treating it with a vengeful attitude to the point it would be better if the state just let the South Coast go to Rhode Island, although there is a bit more the state can wring out of the place if it keeps the city.

Trash.

Everyone has trash. Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut have trash. This is unsightly. Recycling and reclamation centers can be artfully hidden behind trees and industrial parks, but where does all the trash go that people separate into the appropriate containers? 

I watched a truck haul a container away as I was at the reclamation center in Dennis on the Cape, but just saw it ride into the figurative sunset as it just went away out of sight and from there, like what makes a ride at Disney work, none of our concern. 

To keep other towns clean, bright, and postcard worthy, they have settled on New Bedford to be the regional trash receptacle because, well ,this is New Bedford, the state holds a grudge, and the people here are, well, just the people here, not there.

Presently, Parallel Products has a facility in the far North end of the city that recycles metal and glass, and now,  after community protests about adding “biosolids” (poop) to the mix, has settled on only adding only the processing of municipal solid waste. 

People live in that end of town and, although not the tourist part that brings in a lot of outsiders to one area of town, are still residents of the city and not part of the trash being recycled near them.

There may be a financial gain for the city, but at whose expense? 

We already are involved in the city’s renaissance that involves treating many present residents as disposable trash that needs to be removed so people from elsewhere will want to live in the high end, luxury, thousands a month apartments that used to comfortably house the people living here who kept the city from dying.

The people in this neighborhood, although dodging the bullet of human waste, still are facing a facility that operates 24/7 with 6 a.m to 7 p.m. truck delivery hours 6 days a week for a total of 386 trucks per day or 120,818 over a years time, the smell of hydrogen sulfide gas, toxic “forever chemicals” leaking into the ground and the water therein, loss of property value as the area becomes the environs for a dump, and possible harm to human health and the environment which could cause developmental delays and in both children and fetuses, the sacred unborn for the Right to Life crowd.

But, hey, all this is way out there in the part of town most people whiz past as they head up Route 140 going somewhere else where there is no DisneyLand of trash. Out of sight, out of mind. 

As the Mayor put it

“The proposed project would simply be too close to nearby neighborhoods and could harm the quality of life of their residents.”

This should not be a city-wide NIMBY situation but one every citizen should oppose for the sake of fellow citizens.

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