Recycling push puts Berkeley's budget in dumps

In a $10 million deficit announced last week, the single biggest factor - $4 million - was a decline in its refuse revenues.

The city says, in part, that it's a victim of its own success. Residents pride themselves on aggressively recycling and composting, so they're switching to smaller, cheaper trash cans - the only collection for which the city charges.

"The whole business model for recycling and garbage has been to incentivize recycling," said Andrew Clough, the city's deputy director of public works. "We're going to have to do a new business model."

The recession is altering the economics of garbage around the country, according to refuse companies in San Francisco and Alameda counties.

With people buying fewer toys and trinkets, there's less packaging and cardboard waste. If a business fails, there's no trash to pick up. With construction lagging, there's less debris at the transfer station.

"Not only does the amount of garbage change with the economy, but the very nature of garbage changes," said Robert Reed, a spokesman for Recology Sunset Scavenger, which handles garbage, recycling and compost for San Francisco.

But the issue hits Berkeley particularly hard, because it's one of only a few cities that still does its own garbage and refuse pickup.

The construction industry collapse has played a big role in the reduction in drop-offs at the local dump, decreasing Berkeley's revenues by 15 percent even though it hiked the transfer station rates by 10 percent in August.

And residents, switching to smaller bins, have caused an additional 8 percent revenue decline.

Google map the San Francisco bay area. Then move to the east. There is a mountain range between the bay area and the central valley. There are only a couple of road over the mountain range and for the most part is is wide open empty land.

They could build a landfill up in those hills that would take all the trash for the bay area for years and never fill up. Like most things the left believe in, it is a lie. We do not need to recycle, we have run for all our trash.

The only problems California has is management.

For years Democrats (starting with Jerry Brown) wanted us out of our cars so they purposely stopped building new freeways.

Gas taxes that should go for maintenace of roads and bridges has been redirected to other things.

For years California Schools were some of the best in the nation, then Democrats got it in their heads it was unfair for some school district to be better than others. They mandated all money for schools go to Sacramento first, then divided up to the local district. This effectively took the local tax payers (and parents) out of any say on how the schools should be ran. The unions took over and look what we have.

Calfornia once had the ninth strongest economy in the world. The brain trust in Sacramento Democrats and Unions took over and decided the primary role of government was social engineering. High taxes, excessive regulations have run many producers out of the state. They wonder why they now have less money to play with.

The biggest business in California was once farming. The brain trust is currently killing that business by shutting off water to the farmers so that some nameless fish can survive. You can only hope that Mexico steps up food production because if they keep it up California will be out of the food business.

The unions and media continue to support the Democrats. I can the only bright spot is when the parasites kill the host they will die also.

Several years ago the Albuquerque water department decided to really encourage water use reduction under the supposition that at the current rate of usage the city would be running out of water in the near future. So they really did a ad blitz and promotion to encourage water saving devices, desert landscaping, etc. They did so well the population actually reduced their usage by 15% if I remember. It might have been more.

Guess what. About three months after the drastic drop, the city government announced they were going to raise the water rates by 25% to make up the decrease in revenue.

The end result was usage went back to the old amount almost immediately. Typical government stupidity.

There is a large land fill near Livermore.

Look at a map. I am talking about the mountains between Modesto and San Jose. There is nothing in those hills.

In fact most of California is empty space. Landfill does not have to be near populaton or take up land that can be used by farming.

There is more than enough land in California for landfills.

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