I'm not sure where Tim gets his information, but I know at least some of it is wrong.
First of all, HERC burns garbage from throughout the county, not just Minneapolis. Second of all, HERC operates on a 24/7 schedule to maintain efficiency, so what's being stored on-site is what's waiting to be burned in between deliveries. If more garbage is collected than can be stored/used at HERC's peak capacity, the excess gets diverted to landfills. And yes, a significant fraction of Hennepin County's garbage is sent to landfills on a regular basis. I'm not so sure that Tim is wrong about how scheduling for garbage pickup in Minneapolis is determined, but I doubt that it actually takes the entire work-week to cover the Minneapolis routes or we'd be seeing garbage trucks all over the place. Since routes are split between municipal crews and contracted haulers, you can do a lot of routes throughout the city simultaneously. Also consider that businesses and apartment buildings are served by private haulers, so it's only the single-family homes, duplexes and larger houses that the city has to worry about. In addition, with holidays, there has to be some flexibility in collection scheduling or the hauling crews would never catch up - especially this time of year. Also, it's important to note that there's a difference between making runs around the city and delivering to HERC. So I don't believe it would be necessary to restrict collection routes to non-game days. More likely, scheduling might be done so that there's a gap where delivery to HERC where delivery doesn't take place before and during games. I don't know enough about how the HERC delivery schedule is set up to say for sure how that might work. But it's certainly more possible than Tim seems to think. I think our county commissioners deserve a little more credit than they've been getting as far as anticipating logistical issues that might come into play at the Rapid Park site. Honestly, though, I still question whether odors will even be that big of a deal. For the past several years, there have been summer volleyball leagues that run at the Rapid Park site on weekday evenings, with tournaments on weekends - my fraternity brother and former roommate used to run one of those leagues. He never complained about bad odors. A friend of mine at work used to play in another league - she never complained, either. Plus, I've been a regular visitor to the Hennepin County Environmental Services building in recent years, which is literally next door to HERC and I can't say I've ever really noticed the smell. And yes, my olfactory nerves are fully functional - they are tested every time I clean out my cat's litter box. Mark Snyder Windom Park On 1/21/04 6:00 PM, "Tim Bonham" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > This would not work! > > The real problem is that Minneapolis discards garbage faster than it can be > burned, so there have to be piles of it stored SOMEWHERE until the garbage > burner can catch up. I suppose it could be stored somewhere else, if we > taxpayers are willing to pay the cost of hauling it around twice. As for > where to put the piles of garbage, are you maybe volunteering your Windom > Park neighborhood, Mark? > > As for scheduling delivery, well they have to pick up garbage every weekday > now to get the whole city done in 2 weeks. If we restrict them to only > picking up garbage on days when there isn't a game, I can't imagine how > that would ever work. Should we all plan to get extra carts, since they'd > only get around to picking up our garbage every month or two? Get real. REMINDERS: 1. Think a member has violated the rules? Email the list manager at [EMAIL PROTECTED] before continuing it on the list. 2. Don't feed the troll! Ignore obvious flame-bait. For state and national discussions see: http://e-democracy.org/discuss.html For external forums, see: http://e-democracy.org/mninteract ________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A City-focused Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Un-subscribe, etc. at: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
