STATEMENT OF FRANK R. BOWERMAN, CONSULTANT ON SOLID WASTE DISPOSAL, ASSISTANT TO THE VICE PRESIDENT, DEVELOPMENT, AEROJET-GENERAL CORP., EL MONTE, CALIF.

Mr. BOWERMAN. I am pleased to be here. I do have a strong personal interest in matters relating to solid wastes and unfortunately some of the air pollution problems occur from disposal of solid waste. I titled my presentation "Solid Waste-Asset or Liability?" It is not a play on words. I would like to say what I mean.

Senator TYDINGS. Why do you not define solid waste, so we know exactly what you are talking about?

Mr. BOWERMAN. Solid waste in the present practice represents just about all forms of waste, except those which are liquid, or liquid suspension, those categorized as liquid wastes, or in true aerial suspension, air. So I think solid wastes are probably the broadest category of all, and in California where we are doing a study for the State department of public health we have already categorized 82 specific solid wastes in the urban agricultural community. So it is not easy to list those, but if it is solid enough that you can pick up in a shovel, we probably would classify it as a solid waste.

It is customary to view solid waste disposal as a "necessary evil," but after more than 19 years of experience in dealing with solid waste problems in one of the largest metropolitan areas in the world, I am not willing to agree that it is necessarily evil. Necessary, yes—but evil, no.

However, we can do some very unpleasant things with solid wastes in attempting to dispose of them and we can create catastrophic nuisances without half trying. Open dumping on the ground, loose dumping in the ocean, open burning, sloppy salvage operations-all of these can do serious damage to the air we breathe, the water we drink and use for recreation, and the earth we live upon.

Much of these bad effects are the result of our attitude toward wastes somehow we have had trouble looking at them as assets, when it is obvious that someone else has thrown them away as worthless. But the truth of the matter is that there are some places in the United States and even more places in foreign lands where wastes are disposed of in a manner to derive some real utility from them.

Solid wastes can be hygienically and cleanly disposed of in a num ber of ways. Organic solid wastes, mostly paper, paper products, and garbage can be incinerated; composted to produce a soil conditioner: buried scientifically through sanitary landfilling, to create useful land areas; decomposed by bacteria to produce a useful fuel gas, methane. and so forth.

Senator TYDINGS. Are there three different ways in which organic solid wastes can be utilized in a really progressive manner?

Mr. BOWERMAN. No, sir, at this point it is just getting rid of them. although decomposing and methane production are to some degree forms of salvage. Incineration is a volume reduction method unless one salvages the waste heat and that is by no means universal practice in the United States.

With inorganic solid wastes, such as concrete rubble, old bricks, plaster, asphalt paving, tin cans, glass bottles, and the like, there are

only a relatively few choices as to disposal and by far the most common is dumping on the land. With that, we come to one of the cardinal rules of solid waste disposal-there must always be some place available for burying the ashes from incineration, along with the material that cannot be burned. In determining how much dumping space is needed for the future, we must recognize that in major metropolitan areas, such as Washington, about one-half of all the solid wastes are unburnable and must be disposed of by land filling. In other words, every community is faced with the need to develop a long-range sanitary landfill program, whether it incinerates part of the wastes, salvages some of the rest, or otherwise processes the material. Too often we hear that a municipality is faced with the choice between building and operating incinerators or developing and utilizing sanitary land fills. No such choice exist. Some sanitary land fills will always be necessary to provide a final resting place for the solid waste residues and the choice is between a program that uses sanitary land fills exclusively or where partial reduction in volume is made by incineration. In Los Anglees County, we took the course of complete sanitary land filling-in the interest of maximum reduction of air pollutants-and all 13 of the municipal incinerators operating in 1955 are now standing idle or have been demolished and the remains hauled to sanitary land fills.

The skeptics say that Los Angeles is favorably blessed with abundant land for sanitary land filling and that Washington does not share that good fortune. They are only half right.

Los Angeles has enough canyon area and level land that can benefit from planned development of park areas through sanitary land filling that they will not need to think about rebuilding their incinerators for at least a quarter of a century. My crystal ball tells me that long before that day we will have developed successful solid waste disposal methods far superior to incineration. I very seriously doubt that Los Angeles will ever travel the municipal incinerator route againat least not unless and until we learn how to build ones that can be operated with reasonable confidence that they won't pollute the atmosphere and with reasonable economy. The present trends are toward improved design for air pollution control-but at ever-increasing costs for construction and operation. I must admit to you that most of the truly modern incinerators-ones that incorporate electrostatic precipitators for air pollution control and that utilize the waste heat for some useful purpose are being built in Europe and not in America. There may be a lesson in that fact for Europe does have a shortage of land to expand into and the construction of incinerators may now be good engineering in Europe. We have not reached such a point in the United States, except in a few exceptional cases. Washington, D.C., is not one of those exceptional cases.

Senator TYDINGS. Would you elaborate on that last sentence? Mr. BOWERMAN. Yes, sir. The factors that make it almost impossible to landfill is to be surrounded by a megalopolitan area so large that your haul distance exceeds, as I will show later, about 30 to 50 miles. New York City comes close to being one of those exceptional cases, although I have a feeling that we will learn how to use the floor of the ocean for sanitary landfill in less than another 10 years.

But at present the number of instances where a city is so wide and the growth is so intense, that there are no spaces remaining to construct partial and other useful places for sanitary landfill, those are the exceptions.

Senator TYDINGS. In other words, in New York there might be some justification for using incinerators and not using sanitary landfill, but Washington is not located geographically to fit in with that category of exceptions?

Mr. BOWERMAN. That is my opinion, sir.

This brings us back to the skeptics' claim "that Washington, D.C., cannot launch a sanitary landfilling program because suitable land does not exist nearby." First, let me state that I am personally familiar, with the incinerators and landfills and burning dumps in the Washington area and have been for over a period of more than 16 years. I first coughed my way through an inspection of the Kenil worth dump in 1949 and have no less reason now for considering it a completely unnecessary, sordid blight on the beautiful city of Washington, D.C., than when I first stood in utter amazement and watched the conflagration.

To compete with incineration costs, sanitary landfill sites should not be further than about 50 miles from the municipality. This is not a guess, but is based upon actual costs for transferring and hauling refuse in Los Angeles County. In other words, one can dump refuse into large trailers and haul it about 50 miles and bury it in a sanitary landfill for the same price as it costs to pay for and operate a refuse incinerator. The skeptics say that Washington doesn't have the vast network of freeways that permit rapid haul in Los Angeles-and so let's reduce the haul distance to, say, 30 miles just to be on the safe side. Now, draw a circle 30 miles in radius-60 miles in diameteraround Washington and start looking for sanitary landfill sites. Let me assure you, there are many, many potential sites with long-range capabilities for sanitary landfilling within those economic boundaries. Then our skeptic friends say that "the jurisdictional problems of county and State and city authority may make it impossible to haul Washington refuse elsewhere for burial." So what else is new? Seriously, may I respectfully suggest that Washington has before it right now a marvelous opportunity to demonstrate just how good a neighbor it can be by stopping the burning at Kenilworth and doing the finest job of constructing a park, out of unburned refuse, that can be found anywhere in this country. The way we welded together the interest of 77 cities and the county and some 20 special districts in Los Angeles County was to first demonstrate the validity of our promises through the performing of a convincing operation. Only after that were the political doors opened that placed three major sanitary landfills in each of three different cities and two in the county unincorporated areas, without making any restrictions on where the refuse came from. We were told that was impossible, too.

Senator TYDINGS. Will you go into that a little and tell us what happened out there initially. What is your process of development? What would look on the surface to be a frightful liability to have a sanitary landfill has not been the case. You have reached the point in

Los Angeles County where communities actually bid to have a landfill brought into their community. Would you tell us a little bit about that? Mr. BOWERMAN. Yes, Senator.

The first thing that we noticed was that most of the public opposition came because they were well aware of the poor jobs that had been done and were being done at that time in burning dumps or in just open dumps, and so to convince people that it could be done properly we borrowed the help of one of the neighboring cities in Los Angeles County, the small city that ran an exemplary sanitary landfill and we used photographs and motion pictures of their operation to convince public groups, citizens' committees in that area where we wanted to locate a landfill.

Once we had our first fill operating, then we used the same technique, only our own pictures, and whenever we would attempt to locate a disposal operation in a certain part of the county we would first carry out a carefully conducted campaign to educate the local people as to what we proposed to do.

Now, you cannot convince everybody of this. There are some who will never accept a disposal operation even though it is to be a park. But the vast majority of people will be willing to trade the temporary use of truck traffic and the noise of bulldozer operations for the knowledge that when this is completed it will be a beautiful park and they will be able to enjoy it. And as Lou Fuller told you yesterday, it can be a very convincing thing, and if you will permit me, I will show some pictures later to show you how we can do that.

Senator TYDINGS. All right.

Mr. BOWERMAN. In closing, I would like to point out two particularly cogent virtues in sanitary landfilling. One, the completed land is capable of being developed into parks, golf courses, botanical gardens, baseball diamonds, parking areas, and the like but is not suitable for constructing heavy buildings or homes, without very expen; sive foundationing. In a way then by filling land with solid wastes, we make it more desirable for park purposes and less desirable for speculative land development, a fact that should offer some insurance against the public suffering additional future losses of our shrinking park areas. Second, the volume of refuse placed into a carefully constructed "artificial" mountain of refuse, say 200 feet high, is the same as would be needed in filling a similarly deep canyon for golf course purposes.

I mentioned the use of compacted refuse in the construction of such artificial mountains for skiing purposes during a press conference held to discuss a paper I presented at the American Academy for the Advancement of Science's annual meeting here in Washington last December. The press took the suggestion with considerable enthusiasm― even to suggesting in the local paper that one could start by covering the Rayburn Building with solid wastes and making ski runs on it. The suggestion was and is a serious one

Senator TYDINGS. Not about the Rayburn Building.

Mr. BOWERMAN. Not about the Rayburn Building. That does look pretty bad that way. I didn't realize it. [Laughter.]

And I was privileged and thrilled to receive a letter from someone who recognized the practicability of the idea as it might be applied to the beautification of Washington.

Senator TYDINGS. Was that the idea that the Kenilworth Dump site could be built up into a park with a ski run on it? Was that the thrust of the press conference?

Mr. BOWERMAN. It wasn't that specific. Kenilworth_could be improved by putting present contouring into the area. I wouldn't be able to say whether or not it could be developed into a small mountain for ski runs without further study. But there are certainly other areas in and around Washington where this could be done.

The letter reads:

Dear Mr. Bowerman: I was interested to read your comments in the newspaper about using garbage to build ski slopes, golf courses, and parks. Every time I see or smell Kenilworth Dump, I wish that some constructive solution could be found to this problem, and your suggestion is most intriguing.

If you have any more information available on this subject, I would appreciate receiving it. With best wishes, Sincerely, (signed) Lady Bird Johnson, Mrs. Lyndon B. Johnson.

Part of my reply to our First Lady reads as follows:

The suggestion I made to the American Academy for the Advancement of Science regarding the use of refuse and other solid waste for the construction of a small mountain for skiing near Washington was made in all earnestness. I cannot claim the idea as my own, since such a ski run was built some eight years ago outside Detroit by my good friend, Mr. Ted Winkler, former Engineer of Waste Disposal for the City of Detroit. Ted tells me that the mountain is about 135 feet in height and has three sides; one side is quite steep for skiers. the second side shallower in slope for tobagganers, and the third side quite gentle for sledding by the children. It has seen much use during these past years. The facility was built from refuse and covered in layers with earth to provide complete enclosure of all refuse within the earth cover. Not only is such a procedure safe from an engineering point-of-view, but the costs are far less than the cost for incineration or other alternative disposal methods.

It is my sincere conviction that we have available now the technical and political astuteness to dispose of solid wastes without continuing the embarrassment that all United States' citizens must feel toward the Kenilworth Dump.

If you so choose I would be pleased to go through a few slides which actually, might just serve the purpose of making more relevant some of the things that I tried to point out.

Senator TYDINGS. Why do you not go ahead?

Mr. BOWERMAN. All right, sir.

Senator TYDINGS. I acknowledge the presence of Senator Spong of Virginia.

Mr. BOWERMAN. I show you this as a sign at one of the entrances to one of the landfill sites. We felt part of our program would be to operate so that nearby residents would not be offended, and so you see that we did not open on Sundays and we closed after normal working hours, the purpose being, we didn't want to interfere with the early morning hours or late evening hours of the nearby residents. This was all part of a very carefully planned campaign.

Photo No. 1: note that it says "Public Refuse Disposal Site." This was not operated just for governmental vehicles, for refuse collectors. but just average everyday citizens who wanted to haul things rather than to just dump them somewhere on the highway.