You Think Hudson's Truck Route Is Bad?

Imagine if the landfill where Hudson, much of New York State, and elsewhere deposited their garbage was located in or near Hudson.

The garbage we all produce -- about 4 or 5 pounds per person per day -- doesn't just disappear when a garbage truck takes it away or we drop it off at a waste transfer station.  It all has to be dumped in someone's backyard, in someone's town, in someone's county, in someone's state. That someone is almost always someone else, not you or me.  Our trash has to be dumped near a lake, near a river or stream, near farms and vineyards.  Dumped in a landfill that will eventually reach its limit and have to close but continue to produce methane and toxic leachate for decades or centuries into the future.  Dumped by a trail of enormous and loud trucks travelling hundreds of miles to empty their loads before returning to get more garbage, spewing toxic diesel exhaust and CO2 the entire way.  Garbage dumped by trucks that average no more than 7 miles per gallon of diesel fuel.  Seven miles per gallon!  If this isn't the definition of unsustainability, of an unwinnable game, I don't know what is.

Fortunately for downtown Hudson, the tractor trailers headed to (empty) and from (full) Columbia County's garbage transfer station in Greenport do not utilize the truck route running through our city.  I don't know how they get to and from the Senaca Meadows landfill, but they stay away from Green, Columbia, and 3rd Streets. (Probably using Route 9H to and from the Thruway.)