A Day At The Dump (1967)

foreign [Music] dump the last Roundup for lumpy old mattresses yesterday's newspaper empty beer cans and old refrigerators that won't refrige anymore the end of the line [Music] [Music] if you are searching for the perfect adjective to describe America you might consider Rich practical active self-sufficient skilled successful materialistic but this could go on all day what is the best word to describe America Perhaps it is affluent yes America is affluent affluent means to flow abundantly and we do our gross national product amounts to about 750 billion dollars a year three quarters of a trillion dollars most of this half a trillion is spent for Consumer items of course aggregate affluence doesn't mean much to someone who lives in Appalachia or an urban ghetto one home out of 14 In America still doesn't have running water one in ten doesn't have a flush toilet a bathtub or a shower or for that matter regular refuse collection service but this is a future market for American industry also our industrial Outlook is improved each year as four million american ladies cooperate by becoming pregnant with such enthusiastic support America is certain to hit the trillion dollar gross national product Mark before we know it [Music] thank you foreign much of our highly touted gross national product quickly Works its way through the system and ends up on the city dump every year Americans throw away 165 million tons of refuse some of it is well disposed of a tiny amount is composted into a useful material a few modern incinerators which burn at proper temperatures and are equipped with air pollution control devices dispose of some of it and much is buried inoffensively in professionally operated sanitary landfills but the majority of that 165 million tons of garbage and junk ends up as a public nuisance scattered here and there around the countryside burned in adequated incinerators which belt smoke into the atmosphere heaped aimlessly in open dumps which feed and breed rats flies and cockroaches or half buried in mismanaged refuse fills [Music] thank you but our particular dump takes the booby prize kettleworth is located in Washington DC one of the world's most beautiful cities every afternoon a man lights a match and sets fire to the day's accumulation a monstrous cloud of smoke fumes and fly ash mushrooms over the city nearby at the Capitol Building congressmen sometimes look at the man-made clouds and make Angry speeches usually neglecting to recall that Congress itself has traditionally trimmed the District of Columbia budget which should have financed a better system years ago [Music] these are the Mungo Hunters as they are called by specialists in Solid Waste Management originally a Mungo Hunter was a scavenger who looked for scraps of wool waste in the Garment industry but here Mungo Hunters young and old fared around looking for anything of value or interest how did the city get in this fix the present emergency evolved quite naturally Washington area population has increased dramatically the amount of refuse per capita has increased substantially and the department of Sanitary Engineering budget has been consistently inadequate in 1932 the City built two incinerators World War II multiplied trash production and the city was swamped in 1942 the District of Columbia requested permission from the National Park Service which owns this land at Kenilworth to conduct a temporary burning and landfill operation here later a third and fourth incinerator were built but at all times the city has continued to generate refuse faster than it has built incinerator capacity today Washington's increasingly difficult air pollution problem has stimulated so much notoriety and controversy about open burning at Kenilworth that a more acceptable system must be devised the current program calls for converting Kenilworth into an exemplary sanitary landfill and the construction of incinerator number five which unlike the other four will be a model of how to incinerate trash without polluting the air foreign [Music] of valuable metal may be part of any good solid waste program but not at the disposal site where it often interferes with the efficiency of the disposal operation with the aid of money from the Public Health Service the kettleworth dump will soon be converted into a model sanitary landfill already the District of Columbia government has renegotiated its agreement with the National Park Service to change the ultimate land Contours and thus gain added capacity a Consulting engineering firm is developing a detailed design of landfilling procedures and an experienced private contractor will be engaged to operate the landfill the most detrimental aspect of this festering dump is not the air pollution or even the rats and flies and other health hazards involved it's the impact on the nearby residents the smells and the filth and the personal Hazard involved can soon convert any neighborhood into a slum [Applause] [Music] lunch at the dump it takes people and Equipment even to run this unattractive nuisance add a bit more money devise a carefully thought out plan and what was an inferior operation can be converted into an excellent one but problems always seem to grow today the Washington metropolitan area produces nearly 2 million tons of refuse a year but in 1980 we'll have to burn bury or pile up three and a half million tons and if you plan to stick around until the year 2000 what would you do with six million tons a year obviously the long-range answer is an interstate Regional Authority tying together the Central City and its suburbs in one common solution the moment has come it's afternoon and the piles are growing higher every day six days a week 600 tons of refuse is burned at Kenilworth the purpose is to reduce the volume 75 to 80 percent the inadvertent result is the creation of air pollution carbon monoxide hydrocarbons oxides of nitrogen sulfur dioxide and particulate matter a specialist from the U.S Public Health Service recently testified before a senate committee saying we estimate that the Kenilworth dump puts out about 20 tons of 17 types of pollution in a day burning of trash and garbage at Kenilworth and in the district's four archaic incinerators spews into the atmosphere every year nearly 25 000 tons of pollution although the degree of combustion is probably higher than takes place in existing Washington incinerators it is quite incomplete we're cooking our wastes instead of incinerating them the result is a huge quantity of ashes and half burn material which still must be disposed of somewhere and there are the other pollutions from the dump water pollution fly pollution and olfactory pollution in other words it stinks [Music] air pollution is ugly but more important it can kill you doctors connected with emphysema chronic bronchitis and Asthma even the common cold and lung cancer photochemical smog causes eye nose and throat irritation in addition air pollution obscures visibility attacks materials and kills plants nationally the cost has been assessed at 12 billion dollars a year refuse burning creates less air pollution than automobiles industry and power plants but contributes significantly nevertheless the burning kettleworth dump is in some respects merely a medium for shifting a portion of the solid waste burden of the District of Columbia and some outlying areas from the land into the air as pollution incidentally you may wonder why somebody doesn't just take the match away from the man who sets fire to Kenworth every day the department of Sanitary Engineering has two Alternatives both bad either set the fire or get buried in a massive heap of cast-offs [Music] how does that line go my laundry is whiter than yours [Music] burning dumps cause air pollution problems in about 25 percent of the urban communities in the country they are the most frequently reported cause of localized air pollution problems [Music] today and tomorrow in the same picture today's cloud of smoke from the dump in the background and tomorrow's reclaimed Parkland which will look like this golf course when completed at the recent hearings Senators heard these comments the darkening air mocks us we need somehow to achieve a fundamental change of attitude a whole new point of view toward the situation we must realize that clean air and for that matter clean water and all the other benefits of the natural world belong to everyone and that nobody has a right to destroy them [Music] tomorrow this land might have what could be termed butility both Beauty and usefulness thank you [Music] as the sun slowly sinks into the morass at Kenilworth something strange has happened somebody is called the fire department probably some old grouch what a mixed up world the department of Sanitary Engineering sets the fires and the fire department tries to put them out the citizens complain about the smell and smoke meanwhile complain about high taxes but this day at the dump is certain to have a happy ending shortly the fires at Kenilworth will be extinguished for good and ultimately it will be possible to prove that Good Housekeeping is good business thank you [Music] [Music]