PORT HURON -- An unwanted
daily caravan that brings every single bit of Toronto's
trash into Michigan has a new route that cuts straight
through the heart of Metro Detroit.
Trucks jammed with 4,000 total tons
of pizza boxes, rotting food and other trash cross the
Blue Water Bridge daily en route to a landfill in southern
Wayne County. Most had entered Michigan over the Ambassador
Bridge, but a Jan. 1 switch now sends 130 trucks down
a 90-mile stretch of Interstate 94 during morning rush
hour.
The new route keeps the stark red
trailers on one of Michigan's busiest highways for up
to two hours a day. The Monday-Friday convoy to Carleton
Farms landfill in Sumpter Township has lawmakers fearing
delays on the Blue Water Bridge, road damage and safety
hazards.
The route is only eight miles longer,
but it triples the time trucks stay in Michigan. Windsor
residents long had complained about trucks in residential
neighborhoods.
"You make the mess, you should find
a way of disposing it in your back yard," Port Huron City
Manager Thomas Hutka said. "We don't need that type of
transportation on our roads."
This is the latest twist in a feud
that escalated Jan. 1, when an Ontario landfill closed
and Toronto switched from shipping two-thirds of its trash
to Michigan landfills to all 1.1 million tons to Carleton
Farms.
The deal costs Toronto $40 million
annually and could last 20 years.
Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm
and Wayne County Executive Robert Ficano, who took office
Jan. 1, vow to make trash-fighting a high priority. For
years, lawmakers have been stymied by a 1992 U.S. Supreme
Court decision that only allows Congress to regulate the
trash trade.
While Michigan residents may not
like the trash, it shouldn't pose a problem for motorists,
said Jim Wilson owner of Wilson Logistics in Toronto,
which hauls the trash.
Trailers are designed to be odor-proof
and are sealed to avoid spilling during accidents, he
said.
And the convoy is a drop in the
traffic bucket: On a typical day, 3,000 trucks cross the
Blue Water Bridge and as many as 130,000 travel on I-94,
state and bridge records show.
"In the big picture, I don't think
we're even on the scope," Wilson said. "The untrained
eye won't even know we're there."
Bottle law could
be key
The arguments don't sway Granholm
and Ficano, who are studying ways to make it tougher for
Toronto to use Michigan as its dumping ground. Among the
proposals are laws that would ban bottles from landfills
or make trash exporters comply with Michigan environmental
laws. Unlike Michigan, Toronto doesn't have a bottle law
requiring recycling.
"We don't want the state to keep
taking Canadian trash," said Mary Dettloff, spokeswoman
for Granholm, who has a study group looking into the issue.
Ficano's aides also are assessing
the trucks' environmental impact and weighing their options,
said Sharon Banks, his spokesman. Nancy White, elected
last week as chairwoman of Macomb County, did not return
numerous phone messages seeking comment.
Canadian politicians also are joining
the fray.
A group of Ontario mayors along
the trash parade promises to make Toronto an issue in
provincial elections that are expected to be called this
year. In December, a swath of Highway 402 in Ontario shut
down because two trash trucks from Toronto collided, Sarnia
Mayor Mike Bradley said.
"What Toronto is doing is obscene,"
he said. "They're sending a suicide ballet down those
highways. I don't care if it's just 1 percent of trucks
on these highways, it's just a matter of time before there's
a tragedy."
No safety records
Michigan no longer tracks safety
records of hauling companies, but Wilson Logistics' trash-hauling
unit, which operates as Redtree Contract Carriers, earned
a "satisfactory" or average rating from the Ontario Ministry
of Transportation.
The trash trucks were involved in
26 accidents that resulted in police citations in the
two years since Dec. 11, 2000 -- almost four times more
than the province average of seven. The fleet wracked
up 85 safety-related violations and another 12 that weren't
related to safety during that period, records reveal.
Since December, drivers have been
ticketed six times and fined $4,000 for operating overweight
trucks by police in Huron Township near the landfill,
township records indicate. While its neighbor, Sumpter
Township, receives more than $3.4 million in royalties
from the dump, Huron gets nothing and ticketing overweight
trucks is its only recourse to gain reimbursement for
road damage.
Carleton Farms has accepted Canadian
trash for years, but the additional foreign waste makes
nearby residents unhappy. Jennifer Drewyour and her husband
have put their home up for sale because of the dump.
"The worst is the traffic," said
Drewyour, 28, who lives a half-mile from the landfill.
"We have five children and the traffic is just too much."
Others complain about the smell,
from both the landfill and the trucks.
"It's awful," said Renee Ankony,
19, who lives in the nearby Whispering Willow subdivision
in Huron Township. "It's just a trash stench that comes
early in the morning. It doesn't smell right. You just
automatically say, 'Oh my God,' and want to rush to your
car."
Neighbors aren't smelling Canadian
trash, said Matt Neely, Michigan president of Republic
Services, which owns the landfill. They're smelling sludge
the landfill treats from the city of Detroit, and Carleton
Farms is working to reduce the odors, he said.
One landfill used
All of Toronto's trash began crossing
the Blue Water Bridge when Carleton Farms became the city's
exclusive dump for household waste this month.
Until Dec. 31, a third of Toronto's
waste went to a now-closed landfill near the city, while
50 trucks traveled over the Ambassador Bridge to bring
it to a site in Salem Township, and another 32 took the
Blue Water Bridge en route to Carleton Farms.
Crossing into Port Huron adds eight
miles to the 500-mile round-trip, but it keeps trucks
on highways and off residential streets in Windsor, where
neighbors had complained, Wilson said.
It also saves the company money:
The Blue Water Bridge also calculates tolls by axle, rather
than weight, so each truck pays $8.75 to enter the country
rather than the $11 it costs to enter from the Ambassador
Bridge.
"As a Toronto resident, I don't
think anyone is proud to have to send their trash elsewhere,
but for political reasons there is no alternative land
site," Wilson said.
Bradley and Hutka predicted the
influx will add to security delays at the border. By their
nature, trucks full of trash are harder for Customs agents
to scour than more traditional cargo, Hutka said.
"Customs will tear apart a truck
full of clothing as a security precaution, but we're allowing
trailer trucks full of garbage to sail through," he said.
"I don't know how you can effectively inspect that large
a volume of solid waste."
U.S. Customs officials have caught
haulers smuggling money in trash trucks at some border
crossings, said Kevin Weeks, Michigan director of field
operations for the U.S. Customs Service.
He said agents will interview drivers,
X-ray trucks and, if they're deemed a risk, follow trucks
to landfills.
"The fact that trash is unsightly
and unpleasant presents some challenges, but our officers
are trained to meet those challenges as necessary," he
said. "I don't mean to suggest an inspector is going to
crawl through trash, but we will take adequate steps to
satisfy whatever concerns we have."
