Residents Support Recycling

At a one-sided public hearing Wednesday, 18 residents -- students, teachers, a farmer, retirees, businessmen -- urged local waste officials not to scale back or eliminate household recycling in much of South Hampton Roads, as they have proposed doing early next year.

 ``For the last generation and a half, we've told our students and our children that they should recycle, that it's the right thing to do,'' said Don August, a Chesapeake resident. ``We shouldn't change that now.''

Added Martha Terry, a Norfolk senior citizen, ``It can't all be about money. It's about saving our little part of the world here in the corner of Virginia, which is a pretty nice little part of the world, if you ask me.''

The board of directors of the Southeastern Public Service Authority seemed moved by the outpouring Wednesday, as well as by the flurry of criticism that followed its recommendation last month to cut back curbside recycling in seven cities and counties because of high costs and dwindling participation.

After the hearing, board members from Norfolk, Chesapeake, Suffolk, Portsmouth, Franklin, Isle of Wight County and Southampton County talked about resurrecting a curbside collection program -- if they can find a way to contain expenses.

And SPSA's executive director, John Hadfield, suggested afterward that recycling is by no means dead.

``The system we will come out with in the next three or four months will be a stronger system that we think will be more popular with our communities,'' he said.

Hadfield had wanted to make a final decision next month about the future of recycling. It now appears the existing program will continue for at least the next several months, as officials attempt to cobble something else together.

Virginia Beach, which broke away from the SPSA to start its own, automated recycling program in 1997, will not be affected by any changes.

Many other regions across America also are going through recycling crises. Tough economic times and lean budgets are forcing localities to consider downsizing or eliminating these expensive feel-good programs, which have grown stale with age.

Created in the environmentally conscious 1970s, recycling today is being pared down in New York City, while Dallas and Denver, among other metropolitan areas, are eyeing smaller programs with lesser reach.

In Hampton Roads, however, cities such as Virginia Beach, Newport News and Hampton are going in the opposite direction -- investing in bigger systems that capture more goods and are more convenient to residents, but cost more.

The SPSA launched a curbside program in 1989. It has lost money almost every year. It now is subsidized with a monthly fee of $1.05 per home in the service area.

The share of residents who set out their blue bins every other week, meanwhile, has dipped to about 30 percent.

Several speakers at Wednesday's hearing said one key problem is scant publicity. They urged the SPSA to advertise its program and benefits, noting that many people still do not know when collection days are scheduled, or that extra bins and bins with wheels are available by calling the agency.

Leo Johns, a Chesapeake retiree, learned about the bins-on-wheels option at the hearing. ``I look forward to finally being able to recycle,'' he said.

News that the SPSA was considering a major overhaul of its program has spawned a public-relations campaign by environmentalists and civic-league activists. The effort is being financed by Tidewater Fibre Corp., a Chesapeake-based recycling company.

The only speaker supporting the SPSA's plans was a lobbyist for private waste firms. Philip Abraham, representing Virginians for Effective and Efficient Public Service, said the SPSA is smart to consider cutting a program that consistently loses money.

The group supports the idea of each locality designing its own recycling program, which private firms could then run under service contracts. - The Virginian-Pilot