The total quantity of waste generated in 1971 is estimated to have been 4.45 billion tons, up nearly 1 billion tons from 1967. The make-up of this waste is shown below:

1 Includes residential, commercial, demolition, street and alley sweepings, and miscellaneous (e.g., sludge disposal).

The 230 million ton municipal waste load plus that portion of industrial waste occurring in large metropolitan areas constitute what is normally referred to as the "solid waste problem" in popular discus

sion.

One reason for the growing solid waste burden is that resource recovery has declined relative to total materials consumption. A second reason is the substitution of materials-intensive practices (practices which result in consumption of large amounts of raw materials) for less materials demanding practices, e.g., one-way containers for returnable bottles, paper towels for cloth towels, and disposable one-time use products of all sorts-in the home, the office, the hospital, etc.—for products designed for reuse.

The resulting solid waste load is especially burdensome in urban areas because of greater population concentrations and because disposal in urban areas is particularly difficult. The urban population, for example, has grown from 64 percent of the total population in 1950 to 74 percent in 1970, thereby increasing the quantity of solid waste in urban areas by a substantial percentage. Additionally, urban populations generate more waste than nonurban residents-approximately 20 percent more per capita.

Disposal in urban areas is an especially difficult problem because in the city, waste disposal is, at the same time, an environmental, economic, and political problem. Waste collection is labor intensive, labor costs are rising rapidly, and the productivity of most municipal waste collection systems is low. In many urban areas, land suitable for waste disposal has disappeared or is rapidly being used up. Movement of the waste across the boundaries of the political jurisdiction where it occurs is difficult and sometimes impossible. As cities are required to travel longer distances to dispose of their wastes or alternatively are forced to process them to achieve volume reduction, the costs of waste management are increased. To eliminate potential air and water pollution from landfills and incinerators, the waste processing facilities must be properly designed, located, and operated, and must include proper pollution control devices. This degree of control is technologically possible but often costly, particularly in the case of incineration. Given these circumstances, many cities increasingly are viewing resource recovery as both an environmentally and economically desirable alternative to disposal. Unfortunately, this option is most often. not available because demand for materials from wastes is nonexistent or severely limited.

4. U.S.E.P.A., "Closing Open Dumps" (1971), pp. 1-5, 7:

AN OPEN DUMP—WHAT IT IS, WHY IT SHOULD BE CLOSED

A dump is a land disposal site where solid wastes are deposited with little or no regard for pollution controls or aesthetics. Dumps create health hazards, scenic blight, economic loss-and all in all, a spectacular demonstration of what is wrong with solid waste management in the United States. A dump may be referred to as "open" because the wastes are left uncovered, and often neither the existence nor the use of the dump are authorized and there is no supervision.

Frequently, an open dump is also a burning dump. The fire may be spontaneous. It may result from the deposit of smoldering wastes. More often, however, the fire is purposely set in an attempt to reduce volume at the dump or on the erroneous assumption that burning will destroy the food that attracts rodents and insects.

Health hazards are created by dumps through the presence of biological and chemical contaminants, which air, water, birds, insects, and rodents can carry to man and his domestic animals. A burning dump pollutes the air, most commonly in the form of highly visible clouds of particles and incompletely burned gases, or the nauseating stench of smoldering garbage. These air pollutants are a source of human respiratory disease. They also soil buildings, clothing, and furnishings, and are a fire hazard to buildings, fields, and woodlands.

A dump can pollute both surface and groundwater. The wastes themselves, when dumped on banks of streams or lakes or in swampy areas, can pollute the water directly. A less obvious form of water pollution occurs when rain or surface water percolates down through uncovered or improperly managed dumps and carries portions of the wastes into the underlying groundwater.

A dump provides food and shelter for vermin. Extermination efforts by themselves last only a short time-and even then are not 100 percent effective. Burning the wastes may reduce food sources in a limited way, but often only the paper and plastic packaging burns, thus making the food more readily available to vermin.

There are other health threats to humans created by the existence of dumps, since typically the dumps are open to uncontrolled scavenging. Sharp fragments of glass and metal and other hazardous objects, plus pathogenic organisms, toxic chemicals, and open fires present a real danger to those roaming the dumps. The scavengers often interfere with the operation of the dump....

The aesthetic degradation produced by open dumps is difficult to assess in any but abstract terms; it is, nevertheless, very real. No accurate appraisal has been made of the impact a dump has on the value of neighboring property, but one thing is clear-nobody wants one near his home. The National Survey of Community Solid Waste Practices indicates that over 60 percent of such sites are in agricultural or rural areas. Despite such typical locations, the existence of "garbage dumps" is well known. As a matter of fact, when most people think of solid waste disposal they have a dump in mind. They do so with reason, because up to 90 percent of community wastes are now deposited in dumps. This association of wastes and dumps is so

well established that it is the major stumbling block to the location, construction, and operation of sanitary landfills. People have to be shown that sanitary landfills are entirely different from dumps before they will accept their use.

The economic costs of an open dump are never fully appreciated. In the long term, a dump will probably prove more expensive to a community's inhabitants than a sanitary landfill. Even without putting a price on the aesthetic blight produced by a dump, a community will pay more for maintenance, laundry, cleaning, and painting due to smoke. There is no doubt that the value of real estate nearby to dumps is seriously reduced, which reduces the community's tax base. Moreover, this drain on the public continues until the dump is effectively and properly closed. In contrast, a sanitary landfill is more acceptable while being operated, and completed sections provide land that can be used for recreation or other purposes.

Rat Extermination. Rat extermination must be given special attention when closing an active dump. At an old open dump where the food source has been exhausted, rats and insects are unlikely to be present. Where there is a nearby food source, the old dump may still be used by rats for harborage. It is necessary, therefore, to positively establish the absence of rats. If rats are present, an extermination program must be conducted. If the dump closing operation is improperly conducted, the rat problem may be compounded.

Rats are potential carriers of numerous diseases, and if they are not killed when a dump is closed, they may pose even more of a problem than when they are at the dump. They may migrate in numbers to populated areas in search of food and harborage. At a minimum, this would cause unfavorable reaction to the dump closing and the situation would worsen if there was a rise in the incidence of rat bites.

5. U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, "Control of Domestic Rats and Mice" (1968), pp. 1, 11, 14:

Rats in the human environment cause enormous economic losses. They consume or contaminate vast quantities of food and feed, and they destroy other property, as when they cause fires by gnawing the insulation from electric wires. Many fires of unknown origin must be attributed to rats.

No reliable estimate of the rat population of the United States is available as a basis for calculating these losses, although the figure of one rat for every person has frequently been quoted in the literature. If, in consideration of recent improvements in environmental sanitation and rodent control, this rough estimate used in the past is reduced by one-half, that is, to an estimated one rat for each two people, then the United States has some 100,000,000 rats. Each rat damages between $1 and $10 worth of food and other materials per year by gnawing and feeding, and contaminates 5 to 10 times more. Thus, rats may cost the United States between $500,000,000 and $1,000,000,000 annually in terms of direct economic losses.

In addition to the annual dollar losses due to rats, there is also the intangible cost of rat-associated injury and illness. Rat bites create a

serious health problem and are far more common than most peopl realize. In some of the larger cities, hundreds of rat bites are re ported each year, and certainly there are many cases that are never reported.

Based upon available records, large metropolitan areas of the United States experience rat bite at the rate of approximately 10 per 100,000 persons per year. This amounts to three to four thousand cases an nually just in the large cities alone, and the cases unreported from them and from the smaller cities and towns undoubtedly total several thousand more.

Helpless infants and defenseless adults (invalids and unconscious persons) are particularly subject to attack by rats, and occasionally & rat-bite wound causes death. The victim of an attack is usually terrified by the experience, and the mental and emotional scars that remain are often deeper than the physical scars.

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Improper storage of refuse (garbage and rubbish) and of food in the home and in business establishments invites rats to infest blocks and neighborhoods. Rat and mouse populations are controlled by the use of garbage grinders or the storage of all refuse in rodent-proof containers, the satisfactory collection and disposal of refuse, and the proper storage of usable materials. Structural harborage, such as small protected enclosures under cabinets, shelves, and stairs, should be eliminated. Permanent removal of harborage and sources of food will eliminate existing rat and mouse populations.

Good refuse storage practices are dependent upon efficient refuse collection service. Twice-weekly collection of residential garbage, or of combined garbage and rubbish, is recommended to prevent the overloading of individual storage facilities, which provides exposed food for rats and a breeding medium for flies. Daily collection of refuse is recommended for business sections.

Four garbage storage and collection systems were studied in California, and the percentages of containers producing excessive numbers of flies were found to be as follows: 67%, with metal cans and once-a-week collection; 25%, with disposable paper bags and once-aweek collection; 10%, with metal cans and twice-a-week collection; and almost no fly production with disposable bags and twice-a-week collection.

6. Senate Report No. 91–1034, July 23, 1970, pp. 22–22 :

The relationship between public health and improper disposal of solid wastes has long been recognized. Rats, flies, and other disease vectors breed in open dumps and in residential areas or other places where food and harborage are available. A recent literature search by the Public Health Service indicated association between solid wastes and 22 human diseases.

Implications for public health and other problems associated with water and air pollution have been linked to mismanagement of solid wastes. Leaching from open dumps and poorly engineered landfills

is contaminated surface and groundwaters. Contamination of water om mineral tailings may be especially hazardous if the leachate conins such toxic elements as copper, arsenic, and radium. Open burning solid wastes or incineration in inadequate facilities frequently reilts in gross air pollution. Many residues resulting from mismanageent of solid wastes are not readily eliminated or degraded. Some are azardous to human health; others adversely affect desirable plants nd animals.

7. Government Accounting Office Report to Congress, "Need for Federal Agencies To Improve Solid Waste Management Practices” (1972), pp. 24:

Federal regulations generally prohibit Federal agencies from burning wastes in open fires and using open dumps. GAO found open burning and open dumping on Federal lands to be widespread.

The condition of many dumps GAO visited on land administered by the Bureau of Land Management, the Forest Service, and the National Park Service indicated that the agencies needed to improve their operation and control of the disposal sites to prevent air and water pollution and scenic blight. Also wastes taken off Federal land for disposal frequently ended up in improperly operated private dumps.

The Army generally was disposing of its unsalvageable wastes in a satisfactory manner.

At GAO's request, the four agencies classified, according to the methods of disposal, the 651 solid waste disposal sites they operated, controlled, or used in the six States included in GAO's review. The following table shows that 91 percent of the sites could not qualify as sanitary landfills under Federal standards.

DISPOSAL SITES OPERATED, CONTROLLED, OR USED BY FEDERAL AGENCIES

GAO visited 131 of these 651 sites and found that:

56 were burning dumps or showed evidence of burning.

65 were open dumps that had not been covered periodically with earth.

24 were dumps in contact with ground water, streams, lakes, or

swamps.

Seven of the eight incinerators did not meet Federal air emission standards.

In addition, several disposal sites no longer in use had not been closed properly and solid waste was being disposed of in a number of unauthorized areas on Federal land.