It’s bound to happen. As the prodigal metropolises east and west of North Dakota accumulate garbage, after they’ve tried and failed at recycling and incineration, they’re going to want to put that garbage somewhere—stuff it where it won’t offend a constituent or blemish a perfect urban concrete-scape.

These folks are naturally going to think “wasteland” when they think about where to send their waste, and this life being what it is, they’re going to send it right up here to us.

The North Dakota State Health Department’s division of waste management says that no waste company has overtly expressed an interest in North Dakota, but the EPA office in Denver says that Wyoming and South Dakota have received proposals. People in Burbank and the Bronx figure that we have so much room, so few people, and so much sinfully clean air that we’d be glad to take in their garbage. They’re willing to pay a lot to get rid of the stuff, and private companies may be willing to share some of that money with a state or locality, just for the privilege of doing business. It’s simply a matter of time before North Dakota is approached.

A Colorado-based company, South Dakota Disposal Systems, Inc., has proposed a dump to handle up to 1.5 million tons of municipal solid waste a year, most of it—surprisingly—from other states relatively near Edgemont, SD, in the extreme southwest part of the state. The EPA in Denver has reviewed this plan for the “Lone Tree Balefill Facility” (sounds like a great place to vacation, doesn’t it?) and has found no major problems, adding that most regulating of nonhazardous solid waste disposal is a state responsibility and that some states’ regulations are tougher than the EPA’s.

In North Dakota, the State Health Department regulates landfills but only localities can prohibit them. And the assistant director of the waste management division doesn’t think landfills are so bad, if they’re managed properly.

Quite frankly, I think this is exciting news. We’ve got a little unemployment problem here in North Dakota; think about the jobs this would create. We’d need people to build the landfill plants and supervise them, and scads of truckers to drive to New Jersey and Los Angeles to pick up the stuff and haul it back here. No one but stolid Northern European stock (e.g., people who eat cabbage soaked in vinegar and fish soaked in lye) would even consider such a job, so there would be no influx from the margins of the nation. But that’s just the beginning.

Communities in Connecticut and Florida have come up with a new way to dispose of solid waste: “landfill mining.” A crisis seemed imminent in the spring of 1988 when the only landfill in Thompson, Connecticut, was nearly full. Then town officials heard about the folks in Collier County, Florida, who “mine” their trash. That means that they go into existing landfills, extract the garbage, reclaim the decomposed matter as dirt, and put the rest back. Thompson thought this sounded dandy, and tried it.

They’re celebrating now because the project was so successful that it gave them as much as two more years to come up with a way to dispose of the town’s garbage. It’s also saved them money: the landfill mining project cost about $119,000, and hauling the town’s garbage to the closest incinerator would have cost $525,000 in tipping fees alone.

There’s one hitch. According to Connecticut’s Department of Environmental Protection, landfill mining may have limited applications because not all landfills meet the two most important requirements: extensive decomposition and no toxic waste (i.e., lotsa rot and nothing hot). But everyone concerned is hopeful that soon mined garbage will be allowed as fill outside the landfill site—say, at road construction projects.

Think about it: a whole new employment category—”landfill miner.” It couldn’t be any dirtier than being a Roto Rooter man or working in a meat packing plant—or farming, for that matter. Our people are desperate. Supplementing our own garbage with other peoples’ just might be what tides us over until the next oil and coal booms and the price of wheat goes up . . .

. . . At which time we can ship all the foreign garbage somewhere else. Like back where it came from. From what I hear, those places wouldn’t even notice.