Friday, September 26, 2003

Apres Le Deluge, Le Garbage I've gotten into the habit of tossing around the cliche that Americans are "car-dependent," which we are, but of course we're even more dependent on refrigeration. Safe handling of meat; proper freezing, thawing and consumption of perishables; odor management; reliable timetables of disposal...when the juice goes, that combo of behaviors frequently summed up as "the American way of life" starts to disintegrate at amazing speed.  I mean, they're throwing out freezerfuls of steak down in coastal Virginia, according to the Daily Press. Steak! And four grand's worth of squid, shrimp, crab and chum, over at Hooker's Bait and Tackle in Williamsburg. People are dumping stuff in the trash and then hauling the trash out to be picked up, but it's not getting picked up. So you've got streets lined with odor-emitting green bins. Ech. Rahn and Nancy Burleson, residents of Meredith Woods in Newport News, followed instructions from the city to put their trash out Monday. By Wednesday evening, they were still waiting for garbage trucks to rumble onto their street, a lane lined with green garbage cans farther than the eye could see. "It's starting to get worse every day," Rahn Burleson said of the faint rotting odor blanketing his quiet and still-powerless cul de sac. "A trashcan full of meat has got to be heavier than a trashcan full of typical trash," the Newport News public works director observes. I bet. Just to make things that much sweeter, the newly-created urban marshlands are producing hydrogen sulfide gas. The whole town reportedly smells like a landfill; you can imagine the situation at the actual landfill, known as "Big Bethel." Or maybe you'd rather not.  2:36:34 PM    comment []

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