outdoor burning in the state of Michigan, I
went about looking at the information available
on the internet and one of the things I found is
a model ordinance put out by the Michigan
Townships Association in conjunction with the
Michigan Department of Natural Resources.
This document may be found at:
http://www.michigan.gov/documents/deq/deq-ess-caap-modelordinance_312507_7.pdf
There's a seriously troubling part. Local
governments in Michigan, the MML and the
Townships Association appear to exhibit no
common sense where it comes to codifying
known constitutional violations, and the
ordinances stand until challenged in the
courts, usually at significant expense to
some taxpayer, the courts, and the
taxpayers at large whose tax money is
expended to attempt to defend the state
or municipality encroachment on our
civil rights.
The model ordinance promotes warrantless
searches by law enforcement officials in the
following paragraph:
"SECTION 15: RIGHT OF ENTRY AND
INSPECTION
"15.00 Right of entry and inspection.
"The Fire Chief or any authorized officer, agent,
employee or representative of the [Pick one:
county, city, village or township] of [name] who
presents credentials may inspect any property
for the purpose of ascertaining compliance with
the provisions of this ordinance."
The fourth and fourteenth amendments to the
US Constitution and Paragraph 11 of Article 1
in the Michigan Constitution quite clearly prohibit
such actions.
"The Fourth Amendment (Amendment IV)
to the United States Constitution is the part of
the Bill of Rights which guards against
unreasonable searches and seizures, along with
requiring any warrant to be judicially sanctioned
and supported by probable cause. It was adopted
as a response to the abuse of the writ of assistance,
which is a type of general search warrant, in the
American Revolution. Search and arrest should be
limited in scope according to specific information
supplied to the issuing court, usually by a
law enforcement officer, who has sworn by it."
Michigan's constitution says:
"Sec. 11. The person, houses, papers and possessions
of every person shall be secure from unreasonable
searches and seizures. No warrant to search any place
or to seize any person or things shall issue without
describing them, nor without probable cause,
supported by oath or affirmation."
The final sentence of this section, that is here omitted,
was declared void as non-complying with the US
Constitution in 1969 and 1970.
http://www.legislature.mi.gov/documents/publications/constitution.pdf
What is sadder yet is that the individuals who pass
such ordinances are usually immunized for authorizing
legislation they know in advance to be illegal. that
doesn't seem reasonable.
But the story doesn't end there. The alleged purpose
of banning garbage burning is to reduce pollution by
sending our trash to landfills. Rural Michigan has been
burning trash, or illegally burying it, for more than
100 years.
Let's look at the alternative, that is, to send all
household trash to landfills. It seems, when all the
elements are examined, to be a false economy in
terms of the ecological costs.
First, a large parcel of land must be dedicated to
being a landfill. If it wasn't excavated for some
economic reason (a mining operation of some sort)
the land must be excavated, and lined with a water
impervious barrier. Usually the barrier is several
layers thick with sand or gravel or clay in between
and an array of leakage sensors installed that has
to be monitored "forever!"
Next, the household trash must be collected. That
has not been done in rural areas such as Iron
County's because generally the population density is
very low, resulting in long distances driven by rubbish
collectors to collect relatively small amounts of trash.
Consider the labor required for this activity and the
amount of pollution caused by the trucks thus
involved.
Once collected, the trash is dumped at a transfer
station where larger vehicles take up the load. Once
again heavy machinery is involved and more
pollution in handling the trash a second time.
Now the trash makes a journey to the landfill, with
more truck pollution as a result. How much pollution
depends on how far away the landfill facility is.
At the landfill, the trash is dumped, but then it is
further processed and buried using heavy machinery
with more resulting pollution form those machines
that aren't subject to any sort of pollution regulation
since they're never used on highways.
With the trash buried you'd think we're done, but no,
actually we're just at the beginning of another type
of cycle, the biochemical deterioration of the trash
some of which goes on for at least decades, some
for centuries.
The first product is methane. If not tapped using
well style equipment tons and tons of the stuff,
a carbohydrate gas (CH4), spews into the atmosphere.
It is a greenhouse gas. Even where tapped and used
for electrical generation one primary end product is
carbon dioxide. The carbon component is not reduced
in the burning process.
In the end, all that transferring household trash to
landfills does is to increase the net pollution by
whatever it takes to transport trash from the home
of a consumer to a landfill. The pollution content
of the trash always remains the same, and over time
all of it ends up back in the environment.
To require household trash to be buried in a landfill
is simply relocating the pollution out of sight of
the neighbor who complains, in their ignorance,
about the burning of trash. That relocation costs
all of us significant money with a cognizable increase
in the overall pollution in exchange for our efforts.
When I visited England in 2000, homeowners in the
midlands city of Heanor were burning coal in August
to take the chill off the early morning air and to heat
domestic hot water. I'll bet they threw trash in there
to save on the amount of coal they were burning and
to reduce the overall pollution resulting from their
trash being hauled to a landfill.
It seems to me the more "civilized" (a misnomer that
should be read "regulated") we become the more it
costs us, and nothing we've achieved has significantly
reduced the amount of pollution each of us contributes
to the whole.
Bill Vajk
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