The Town of Vienna is in the process of re-thinking its strategy for fall collection and disposal of leaves. There will be a public hearing at 8 PM this Monday (March 21, 2022), at the Vienna Town Hall. You can find the background materials at this link on the Town of Vienna Granicus web page.
And, of course, I’ve already been forward the inevitable social media posting that gets all the facts wrong. Because misinformation and disinformation is what social media is all about.
So let me start by just copying my response to an email that was forwarded to me. I’ll do a more extensive post on this in just a bit. But the email more-or-less gets all my main points.
Dear XXXXX, The statement that leaf pickup will be discontinued/shut down is wrong, and by forwarding this without checking the facts, you've helped spread that misinformation. All three options on the table would continue leaf pickup. They only differ in terms of what they do with them. Option 1 is to keep doing what we're doing. Option 2 is to continue to store leaves at what used to be called Beulah Road Park, then to truck them to Loudoun County for mulching there. Option 3 is to truck the leaves directly to Loudoun County. I'll also point out that the odor is only a small part of the problem, and the concept of ventilation is misguided because the whole thing is already outdoors. The main issue is that the sound of that mulching operation reaches 90 decibels at some of the surrounding houses. That's really loud, and that appears to be irremediable, because that's with the existing sound wall. It's not a minor annoyance, it's a blight on that neighborhood. There's no way you'd put up with that sitting 70' from your property line. A second issue is that, now that they've finally done the accounting, the Town realizes that those "free" loads of mulch have an average cost of about $100 each. It's basic Soviet-Union-style value-destroying enterprise for the Town to run what amounts to an inefficient, small-scale mulch production facility, and then use the fact that people will accept the product for free as an excuse to continue with that inefficient production. The realistic question to ask is how many people would ask for mulch at $100 per load? Judging from what I can see regarding Arlington, if the Town merely charged its costs for that mulch, virtually all the demand for it would evaporate. Arlington County charges as mere $50 per load, and on a per-capita basis, they deliver one-third the amount of mulch that Vienna does. It's not even clear that the current setup has any environmental benefit whatsoever. Obviously, the most environmentally sound policy is to keep your leaves on your property. That's what I do. I sheet compost them on my garden. But in addition, the fossil fuels burned to deliver the leaves to Beaulah Road, then grind them, then deliver 700 loads of much in town, are arguably greater than the fuel consumed to truck them to Loudoun County in the first place. The icing on the cake is that town is using what amounts to a unique $16M asset (the eight acres of what used to be called Beulah Road Park) as, well, a dump. If they go with option 3, as a bonus, they liberate that unique $16M worth of land for some better use -- such as actually being a park. I know people like "free" stuff, but this mulch isn't free. It's pre-paid by all of our tax dollars. It really is a blight on the neighborhood where the town runs its grinding and storage operation. And it's arguably of little or no net environmental benefit. Chris
