The site where Howard County dumped more than 2 million tons of trash is serene -- a peaceful meadow dotted with wildflowers and tainted only by the occasional whiff of something slightly rotten.
The trash had been heaped as high as 100 feet, then covered with dirt and, eventually, vegetation. The real consequences of that method of waste disposal now are being measured by tests that show what cannot be seen or smelled: This closed section of the Alpha Ridge landfill is emitting thousands of tons of methane gas every year, and chemical contamination is slowly spreading from the landfill's perimeter.
Howard taxpayers will pay millions in the next two or three decades for cleanup, as well as to provide safe drinking water for nearby residents and find an alternative to using landfills for county waste.
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Alpha Ridge, west of Marriottsville Road and just across the Little Patuxent River from a new county park, is Howard's only active landfill. It represents the county's current and soon-to-be past approach to solid-waste management.
For years, Howard has taken care of its trash relatively cheaply. Residents have not paid a separate fee for trash disposal, apart from property and income taxes.
But a combination of environmental awareness, increased regulation and, most of all, escalating costs, has brought the county to a turning point. In the near future, the county plans to start exporting its trash -- most likely to large mega-landfills in southern Pennsylvania or Virginia. As a long-term solution, some county officials have voiced support for a regional incinerator or waste-to-energy plant, although such a project would be expensive and require unprecedented regional cooperation.
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By fiscal 1998, Howard County, with a population of 217,000, probably will be paying $16 million a year for trash disposal, said John O'Hara, chief of the county's Bureau of Waste Management. That represents a total increase in the county's costs of $10 million to $11 million, O'Hara said. The increase will come from the higher cost of exporting trash, a loss of about $5 million in annual revenue from fees paid by businesses to dump at Alpha Ridge and debt service payments for cleanup efforts at Alpha Ridge and the county's two closed landfills at Carr's Mill and New Cut Road.
That does not include $10.5 million for a public water project around Alpha Ridge designed to address concerns about potential contamination of wells, which provide water to about 250 homes within a mile of the landfill. That project is paid for under a separate budget, partially with long-term utility bonds.
All of this means that residents may find themselves paying for trash disposal with a trash tax, utility charge or on a per-bag or per-can basis.
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Last month, County Executive Charles I. Ecker (R) created the Solid Waste Funding Assessment Board to review the county's funding of trash disposal. His goal: find a way to make trash pay for itself. Committee members are scheduled to report their findings by Sept. 1.
Ecker's first attempt to raise money for waste disposal was defeated when the County Council rejected a proposed flat trash tax in 1992. A new County Council probably will address the issue again next spring in time for preparation of the fiscal 1997 budget. Several people involved in the process said they favor a volume-based fee that would encourage residents to reduce and recycle.
The pressure to find a solution to Howard's trash problem has increased even as the county's overall production of trash has declined. The current landfill "cell" at Alpha Ridge is nearing capacity.
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Alpha Ridge took in 177,260 tons of trash in the fiscal year that ended in June 1994, down from more than 200,000 tons a year in the late 1980s. The county's production of trash peaked at 287,000 tons in 1989. The decline can be attributed to an economic slowdown and a dramatic rise in the county's recycling rate, up from 2 percent in 1990 to 30 percent last year.
County taxpayers also will be paying for old landfill projects. Critics have faulted the county for using 20-year bonds to fund solid-waste projects that had a life of only four to five years.
"There are a whole bunch of expenses from the past that are coming due," said L. Scott Muller, an economist who lives near the Alpha Ridge landfill and was appointed by Ecker to the funding committee. "It's like taking out a 30-year mortgage on a used car. It just doesn't make any sense, because you're paying for it long beyond its potential useful life."
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Muller advocates a financing system that would pay fully for current trash disposal costs and establish a contingency fund in case of future problems such as the contamination at the county's three landfills. He agreed with several others interviewed that the county should have a fee system that encourages residents to minimize trash.
"There are a lot of ways to encourage changes in behavior," Muller said. "We could make trash so expensive that people pull out everything they can to recycle."
Miriam Mahowald, a horticulturist, chaired a committee formed by Ecker that studied the solid waste issue for two years before submitting a report in February 1994. She fears the county will end up taking the easy way out by exporting trash, rather than working toward a long-term regional solution.
Mahowald said the committee was lobbied intensely by waste haulers interested in the lucrative contract to export the county's trash. Browning-Ferris Industries is planning to build a waste transfer station that would process trash for export.
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"A regional solution has been talked about for years, and I don't see the commitment as any stronger than it was years ago," Mahowald said. "The pressures are really high to just continue to ship out. To me, that's like throwing your trash in someone else's yard. I don't believe that's the mind-set in Howard County."
The county has floated the option of opening a new cell at Alpha Ridge to take ash from an incinerator if Baltimore area governments are successful in reaching a regional agreement. Also, Baltimore, Howard and Anne Arundel counties recently have approved funding for a $5.9 million composting facility in Jessup that would take a limited amount of yard waste.
O'Hara, the chief of waste management, said Howard is simply confronting the realities of a trash market that encourages exporting trash to large landfills that operate on economies of scale.
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A work group formed by the Baltimore Metropolitan Council has made little progress, O'Hara said, but is getting ready to undertake a comprehensive study of the feasibility of a regional solid waste solution.
Dennis R. Schrader, a new County Council member who served on Mahowald's committee, said the county has to be realistic.
"In an ideal world, we wouldn't ship our trash out of the county -- period," Schrader (R) said. "But that would be naive. I'm willing to be flexible to manage our way through this. . . . The good news is we have identified the problems."
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