The figure was revealed in the Alice Springs regional waste management facility report for October.

The dead pet you asked the vet to eliminate will end up buried in landfill, in most places across the country, and Alice Springs is no different.

“It’s a combination of horses, dogs, cats, pigs, any creature that dies,” said Alice Springs council technical services director Greg Buxton. “Road kill, kangaroos and that, the rangers pick them up, and you have to dispose of them somewhere hygienic. So we place them at the rear of landfill.”

The facility is on track to exceed last year’s total, with 3.7 tonnes deposited in the first quarter of the financial year.

Mr Buxton said most regional councils across the country dispose of dead animals in landfill.

“In the larger cities that they have an incinerator type setting where they cremate them, whereas we don’t have an incinerator here,” he said.

by: http://www.news.com.au/national/northern-territory/central-australias-animal-graveyard/story-fnn3gfdo-1227123002725

The first of several public meetings concerning the disposal of over 15 million pounds of M6 propellant at Camp Minden attracted close to 150 concerned citizens and officials to the Minden Civic Center Thursday night.

There, they heard the agreement reached between the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the U.S. Army, which will finance the $28.5 million clean up of the illegally stored material left by Explo Systems, Inc., calls strictly for open air burning.

“Local contractors, the Maddens, designed a device,” Webster Parish Sheriff Gary Sexton, who set up the assembly, said. “For some reason, that device is not being considered in this clean up process.”

“We’re disappointed,” James Madden, owner of Madden Contracting, said. Madden’s son, David spent time and money researching and constructing a prototype which would have allowed closed incineration of the goods. “We believed we built a better mousetrap.”

However, Madden might not be out of it yet. The Army must first design a bid package and go through a process required by law to discover a company to take on the project.

“The Maddens can throw in a bid on the open tray process,” Sexton said.

State Sen. Robert Adley said while debate concerning responsibility was taking place, the Maddens developed a strategy to deal with it. Adley, together with others from the local delegation, attended a demonstration of the incinerator at Camp Minden last January.

“It seemed good to us,” Adley said. “We’re not professionals, but under law, by their interpretation, the EPA can’t use that process. I regret that, but it’s where we’re at this stage of the game.”

Adley said that under existing law, the Louisiana Military Department and Maj. Gen. Glenn H. Curtis are expected to take bids from whoever supplies one. “All of these things will be taken into consideration. It would be fantastic if it ended up being a person who, when they finish, will be sitting here breathing this air with us.”

“I’ve studied this process and, yes, I did work for an incinerator,” he said. “I met with EPA officials and other experts not associated with the EPA, and they are going down the right path with the open trays”

Madden said his change of heart hinged on the haste with which the disposal must take place to prevent more degradation of the product, which makes it more dangerous.

“It’s important this get started the first quarter of next year,” he said. “I have looked at the air quality plumes (from open tray burning). Only 10 percent of this fallout will visit Doyline. There is an equal amount going toward Bossier and moving north. We’re going to get some of this.”

District 10 State Rep. Gene Reynolds said, moving forward, communication is crucial.

“On my site and in my office, we’ll keep all the completely updated materials,” Reynolds said. “We’re going to keep (the people ) informed with everything that emerges from this point forward.”

Sexton stressed the importance of the public’s help.

“Help us calm the anxieties of the people in the community about what we don’t know will happen with the destruction of the M6 propellant,” he said. “We may all speculate on matters that may happen, but we don’t need to talk about what we have to be concerned about. The men and women that are going to be accountable — whoever the contractor is — the people which will be disposing of this product, keep them in your prayers because something could happen to the men and women that are responsible for going out there and opening those bunkers, choosing this item up, moving it and destroying it where we can live in a safer community.”

The upcoming public meeting is tentatively scheduled for Dec. 16. Time and location have not been decided.

by: http://press-herald.com/open-tray-burning-wins-out-over-closed-incinerator-for-m6-propellant-at-camp-minden/

by: http://press-herald.com/open-tray-burning-wins-out-over-closed-incinerator-for-m6-propellant-at-camp-minden/

Patients with this virus create 440 gallons of medical waste daily, including tools, gowns, gloves, body fluids, sheets, mattresses and more. That’s a considerable amount of medical waste in any situation, but it is especially daunting in this situation since it should be disposed of extremely cautiously, to avoid the risk of spreading disease. What do you do with a problem such as Ebola waste? As you don’t need to throw it in the garbage.

Somewhat surprisingly, states Bausch, the United States really faces bigger problems in regards to disposing disposing of Ebola waste, which can be simply burned in massive pits in Africa:”In the USA, of course, we are somewhat beholden to higher tech solutions, which in some ways are a little bit more problematic in terms of treating all that waste, and we want autoclaves or incinerators that could handle that sort of thing. It’s not the true inactivation that is particularly difficult; it is just the process of finding the waste from, of course, the frontline of care and interaction with the patients safely to the place where it could be incinerated or autoclaved.”

The problem in america is ironically compounded by the increased access to medical care, and the high quality of medical services, available. In america, patients are treated by medical teams with access to a huge volume of supplies they use for security, including masks, gowns, booties, and gloves, together with sanitizers and other tools. Moreover, patients receive extensive medical interventions that create waste such as needles, tubing, medical tape, empty IV bags, and more. The very care that has helped a lot of the handful of Ebola patients in america conquer the disease has contributed to the massive amount of waste generated, highlighting a critical hole in U.S. medical infrastructure — while African hospitals might have lacked the staff and supplies needed to supply help to Ebola patients, they’re at least prepared to deal with the waste.

The CDC just issued guidelines to assist clinicians and administrators decide upon how to handle Ebola waste, but The New York Times notes that many facilities don’t have the autoclave, and incinerator, capacity to deal with medical waste with this scale. Some countries prohibit the burning of medical waste altogether, or have barred incineration of Ebola waste, resulting in the transfer of waste across state boundaries to facilities that could handle it, which poses its own dangers; with every mile added to transportation, there’s a greater danger of spreading disease to previously unexposed communities.

Surprisingly, defenders of burning the waste come from surprising corners. Environmentals such as Allen Hershkowitz, National Resources Defense Council senior scientist, point out that:”There is no pollutant that’s going to come from a waste incinerator that is more dangerous than the Ebola virus. When you are dealing with pathogenic and biological hazards, sometimes the safest thing to do is combustion.”

The argument in defense of incineration could be bolstered by the fact that medical waste businesses specialize in high-efficiency incineration with equipment designed to minimize and trap byproducts of combustion, reducing overall pollution considerably. Fears about Ebola, rather than real environmental or public health issues, are driving the decision to push against incineration of ebola waste in several areas, but eventually, the United States is going to have to face facts: The mounting waste that accumulates in facilities where Ebola patients receive treatments needs to be disposed of safely, and promptly.

by: http://www.care2.com/causes/an-unexpected-ebola-infrastructure-problem-waste.html