To the editor:

Sorry, but I must strongly disagree with Bill Milligan’s “My Call” article in the June 26 Call “Better Site” about the uses for the National Lead property.

South county is our community and we must not start pointing to other parts of our community to shove the trash transfer centers into. South county will stand together against any site in our community.

We must demand that St. Louis County government look at the entire trash problem and form a group made up of citizens, the waste industry, environmental, medical, state and county waste officials.

There are many considerations on locating and designing a transfer center. Other states have done this with much better results — those who haven’t planned or had an open exchange of information have had bad results.

Ten years ago, the Missouri Department of Natural Resources mandated a 40 percent reduction in landfills. Missouri does not currently meet that mandate.

Isn’t there some department in county government that has looked into this? If not, let’s get to work.

The county cannot simply let a private company say it wants to open transfer centers without an overall plan. That plan must include ways to reduce garbage, and the trash-transfer center must offer other services to benefit the community — resident dropoff of recycling items, bulk items and yard waste.

Other transfer centers in Missouri provide these services to residents.

We have time to work on this plan — the Peerless Recovery transfer center in Valley Park will be a large facility, capable of handling all the garbage from all of St. Louis County. We can’t jump at a private company’s request for them to pop up, with only about three weeks to completely evaluate it.

We must look at current and future needs and plan for the future.

Barb Diehl

Oakville