The Trash Was Historic, Too

Workers Pull an All-Nighter to Clear Spectators’ Detritus

Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, January 22, 2009; Page B01

The day after America’s biggest yard party was all about the cleanup.

Washington trash trucks hauled away at least 130 tons of garbage after the inauguration of President Obama, with more to go. National Park Service workers picked up almost 100 tons on the Mall and near the White House.

Because most trash cans had been removed for security reasons and a record-breaking crowd gathered downtown, the mountain of rubbish left behind was of historic proportions.

“More than any Fourth of July, more than any event we’ve seen,” Park Service spokesman William Line said.

The detritus included handwarmer packets, bottles, food, newspapers, blankets, gloves, coolers and a table or two, in addition to items bought from street vendors.

“They left behind Obama hats, Obama bags, Obama socks,” said Mafara Hobson, spokeswoman for Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D). “People left behind a lot of trash. A lot of it was the vendors along the parade route, too.”

About 110 city workers were assembled downtown at 6 p.m. Tuesday, ready to begin their all-night cleanup. But with crowds still thick in the streets, the hardest work had to wait, said Nancee Lyons, a Department of Public Works spokeswoman who watched some of the overnight cleanup.

“There was so much trash left behind. Piles and piles,” Lyons said. “When all those people were there, you didn’t realize how bad it was. But once they left, we saw the work ahead.”

City workers on double and triple shifts tackled the peaks, determined to get the garbage out of downtown before the morning rush hour, Lyons said.

“People left so many of their personal effects. Blankets, sleeping bags,” Lyons said. “Then the places where the vendors were, some of them just left their tables behind.”

Some of the mess was attributed to a dearth of trash cans, which some folks complained about.

Lyons agreed there were not enough. She said that because of “security issues,” many receptacles had been removed, and the agency was not allowed to put extras out.

The result was a massive all-nighter

The city used 20 street sweepers to push aside the litter. Twelve leaf vacuums sucked up the garbage in giant tubes, and 12 compactors followed, making the debris more manageable, she said.

The rest — papers, cups and blankets caught in metal barricades lining the streets and bleachers still on the sidewalks — had to be picked up by hand, she said.

The trash generated at all other events ever held on the Mall paled compared with what was left Tuesday, Line said.

After the last firework has fizzled on an average Fourth of July, the Mall’s major annual event, the Park Service deals with about 17 tons of garbage. On an average day, there are about three tons, he said.

On the Mall, the cleanup began at 8 p.m. Tuesday, when about 300 Park Service workers and 100 volunteers from the Presidential Inaugural Committee headed to the grassy expanse with garbage bags. They picked up trash throughout the night using spiked poles, Line said.

By yesterday morning, thousands of spent hand warmers were gone. Bottles, cans, wrappers, papers, gloves, hats, blankets, sleeping bags, American flags and folding chairs had been removed, and only flocks of birds were left to feast on high-protein snack crumbs.

As the skeletons of Jumbotrons and speakers were being dismantled and flatbed trucks hauled away 17 miles of metal barricades and chain-link fencing, workers maneuvered around the summer-size tour groups that stayed behind to take in the Mall’s attractions in less-crowded circumstances.

Commuters returning to work downtown negotiated double-parked vans that were filling up with tables and chairs. On office building rooftops and in parks, workers dismantled white tents, which collapsed like so many ruined souffles.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/21/AR2009012103900_2.html?sid=ST2009012102519&s_pos=

EPA ‘Cow Tax’ Could Charge $175 per Dairy Cow to Curb Greenhouse Gases
Farm Bureau warns just this one rule may increase milk production costs up to 8 cents a gallon.

By Jeff Poor
Business & Media Institute
12/30/2008 4:55:19 PM

Call this one of the newest and innovative the ways your government has come up with to battle greenhouse gas emissions.

Indirectly it could be considered a cheeseburger tax, but one of the suggestions offered by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in its Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPR) for regulating greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act is to levy a tax on livestock.

The ANPR, released early this year, would give the EPA the authority to regulate greenhouse gas for not only greenhouse gas from manmade sources like transportation and industry, but also “stationary” sources which would include livestock.

The New York Farm Bureau assigned a price tag to the cost of greenhouse gas regulation by the EPA in a release last month.

“The tax for dairy cows could be $175 per cow, and $87.50 per head of beef cattle. The tax on hogs would upwards of $20 per hog,” the release said. “Any operation with more than 25 dairy cows, 50 beef cattle or 200 hogs would have to obtain permits.”

Kate Galbraith, correspondent for The New York Times, noted on the Times’ “Green Inc.” blog that such a “proposal is far from being enacted” and that the “hysteria may be premature.”

But Rick Krause, senior director of congressional relations for the American Farm Bureau, warned it’s certainly feasible – especially based on the rhetoric of President-elect Barack Obama and the use of the EPA to combat global warming. Such action by an Obama administration would take an act of Congress for livestock to be exempt.

“The new president has been on record as saying that he really supports regulating greenhouse gases out of the Clean Air Act,” Krause said to the Business & Media Institute. “So, we really have to keep an eye on it. Legislation would really be the only way to exempt it at this point – the cow tax.”

Krause said it is difficult to quantify the cost that might be passed directly to the consumer by farmers from the legislation, but predicted it would mean higher costs for dairy production.

“It’s hard to figure what it would do to consumer prices since farmers, unlike other industries, really can’t pass their cost along directly like utilities and things do,” “About the only thing we could realistically come up, in terms of any of this stuff – it would add between 7 and 8 cents per gallon of milk costs to farmers. So it would cost them 7 or 8 cents more to produce a gallon of milk.”

Even the Department of Agriculture warned the EPA that smaller farms and ranches would have difficulty with limits as much as 100 tons annually on emissions:

“If GHG emissions from agricultural sources are regulated under the CAA, numerous farming operations that currently are not subject to the costly and time-consuming Title V permitting process would, for the first time, become covered entities. Even very small agricultural operations would meet a 100-tons-per-year emissions threshold. For example, dairy facilities with over 25 cows, beef cattle operations of over 50 cattle, swine operations with over 200 hogs, and farms with over 500 acres of corn may need to get a Title V permit. It is neither efficient nor practical to require permitting and reporting of GHG emissions from farms of this size. Excluding only the 200,000 largest commercial farms, our agricultural landscape is comprised of 1.9 million farms with an average value of production of $25,589 on 271 acres. These operations simply could not bear the regulatory compliance costs that would be involved.”

Government aid could save U.S. newspapers, spark debate