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There is so much to say on this tropic it is hard to know where to begin. Here in Yamhill County, we watch giant garbage trucks pouring through the county on a daily basis, bringing garbage from all over the area.  This is insane. Why are we moving garbage from place to place? If every town had to see the garbage that it produced, people would probably stop making so much garbage.

Landfills are an archaic method of disposing of goods, dating from a time when people threw out things that decomposed in a matter of days. Now we know that we are throwing away things that can be recycled, composted in a meaningful way, or should never have been made in the first place.  

Landfills are the biggest source of methane gas, the WORST greenhouse gas known to science.  There is NO monitoring of the amount of methane that is produced by a landfill, but it is thought that only 50% of it is ever captured and flared.  Now we are being told that a "green" source of electricity is coming from landfill gas. (LFG) NOT TRUE. Methane is only a part of what is in LFG: the remaining elements (dioxins, being one of them) are equally dangerous in other ways.  The means by which electricity is generated from LFG is dirty and inefficient, yet companies making electricity from LFG get huge tax credits.  Electricity production does nothing to reduce the amount of methane that is ever captured.

Landfills should be prohibited from accepting ANYTHING that decomposes and thus creates methane. The state of ORegon is woefully behind the curve on requiring comprehensive composting of food scraps, paper, green waste. This alone would be a huge step in decreasing the amount of toxic gas that is emitted by all landfills around the country and the state.

In addition, in Yamhill County, we have room for OUR garbage, just not everyone else's.  If we could eliminate other people's garbage, could do meaningful recycling, and composting, along with enhanced dry waste management, our landfill would last a long time.

ilsa perse

posted 2 years, 9 months ago
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Nestle is being sued all around the country for DEPLETING WATER TABLES but above and beyond that, the bottled water industry is about making money, selling a resource that is no better than what comes out of most of our taps.

Oregon has SERIOUS water issues,  a potential shortage that most Oregonians are just beginning to become concerned about. Rainfall has nothing to do with available ground water. All around the state, people are becoming aware of falling water tables. Bottling our water to ship it away from the area is beyond shortsighted. 

Nestle will profit hugely, and by the time the detrimental affects to the local water table become obvious, and the lawsuits begin, Nestle will be gone. They destroyed the water table in rural Michigan, where citizens have been fighting for years to close the plant.

There are huge environmental issues around bottling water.  

1. It takes 3 bottles of water to make one disposable plastic bottle--

2. 1.5 MILLION BARRELS OF OIL---enough water to run 100,000 cars a year---are used to make plastic water bottles. Transporting the bottles requires even MORE oil

3. 85% of plastic water bottles land up in landfills.

Americans have access to good water.  The bottled water industry spends millions of dollars a year scaring people about the water that comes out of our taps.  The only benefit derived from selling water will be reaped by Nestle.

Even in Italy, where bottled water has been the norm for decades, officials have begun a campaign to eliminate the use of bottled water because the environmental concerns are now becoming obvious. 

Water in America is safe to drink.  The creation of 40 jobs will pale in comparison to the environmental catastrophe that will ultimately result from bottling water in Cascade Locks. 

posted 3 years, 11 months ago
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