The Cornell-Community Waste Management Advisory Committee begins its second year in existence today in an atmosphere of unprecedented cooperation and resolve.
While nobody knows whether members will reach a consensus, key participants are devoting many hours each week trying to assemble and weigh alternatives in order to meet a Dec. 31 deadline they have imposed on themselves for recommending a long-term method of disposing of biological waste generated at the College of Veterinary Medicine and other units of the university.
If a consensus proposal emerges, Cornell's most senior representatives on the committee, Donald F. Smith, dean of the College of Veterinary Medicine, and Hal Craft, vice president for facilities and campus services, have said they will pursue its adoption as university policy and work toward approval by the State University Construction Fund, which would finance construction of a successor to the present Vet College incinerator.
After months of procedural wrangling, the gulf between university and community members has narrowed noticeably as they delve into substantive issues on an accelerated schedule. Working groups are addressing such topics as methods of minimizing the university's waste stream, establishing criteria to use in examining disposal options and ultimately recommending the ecologically sound technology deemed capable of handling Cornell's biological waste.
CCWMAC (pronounced "Cowmac") was assembled a year ago following protests from some area residents opposed to a proposed incinerator upgrade and expansion. The committee is composed of about two dozen representatives of environmental groups, government agencies, community organizations, elected officials and such campus entities as the Cornell Greens, the Cornell United Progressives, the Student, Graduate & Professional Student and University Assemblies and the Faculty Senate.
Work of the committee has been coordinated by the Community Dispute Resolution Center, an independent Ithaca-based non-profit organization. In mid-summer, saying they were frustrated by the committee's lack of progress at the time, two facilitators from the CDRC, Linda Finlay and Judith Saul, met separately with university and community members of the committee to gauge prospects of an eventual agreement.
"We wanted to get a sense of whether it made sense to keep going," Finlay said. "All groups told us they felt that we were going to get a recommendation and they were willing to work hard to get there. . . . What exactly will be proposed is still up in the air, but people are really not that far apart," she said, adding that "only four or five processes" seem capable of handling Cornell's waste stream, which includes large animal carcasses shipped to the Vet College for examination as well as plastics and other materials categorized by the state as regulated medical waste.
Cornell officials took an emotional issue out of play earlier when they said the university has no intention of burning plastics in Ithaca. The university ships plastics to a Vermont company for incineration but might have been able to safely burn them in the upgraded incinerator that now has been abandoned. But the anger and suspicion that permeated the committee in its early days can still surface on occasion.
Last week, several representatives refused to interview one proposed technical consultant, for example, asserting that he was unacceptable because of the arrogance they detected in his presentation at a community meeting last year when the original incinerator was still under consideration. Community members also voted to abstain from comment rather than endorse a plan they praised that will use advanced disposal technologies in two new laboratories at the Vet College.
"I viewed that as a litmus test because it was a pretty cut-and-dried decision," said Phil Zarrielo, a hydrologist at the U. S. Geological Survey who chairs the Ithaca Town Conservation Board. Zarrielo, whose work on the committee has won respect from Cornell representatives and his fellow community members, said some members' refusal to endorse the Vet College plans reflect lingering suspicions about Cornell and the resolution process. "If that's the way they still feel," he asked, "why are they still coming?"
"One of my complaints," said Ana Alcarez, a doctoral student from Mexico City who represents the Graduate and Professional Student Assembly, "is that there are not enough people with scientific backgrounds. They don't realize what the research community is producing. To be convinced about something, you really have to understand what the process of producing plastic is about, to know where you can cut corners if you want to minimize. For instance, all the plastic can be put on Mars. That would solve the problem for everybody. But how are you going to get to Mars?"