Worley Supports Solid Waste Flow Control Gestapo

By Paul Gable

Attempting to head off an amendment to the Horry County solid waste flow control ordinance, council member Harold Worley said, “solid waste needs a Gestapo” in remarks to the county council Administration Committee Friday.

Worley, chairman of the admin committee and normally an advocate for citizens, has long been a strong supporter of the Horry County Solid Waste Authority, for reasons that remain a mystery.

Generally a master at directing debate on an issue, Worley resorted to hyperbole when his attempts to stall an amendment to the county flow control ordinance were flagging.

Worley is correct. The HCSWA has often acted in the manner of a Gestapo and has certainly done so, for no good reason, in the four years since county council passed an ordinance establishing solid waste flow control in the county and the HCSWA has directed virtually all solid waste generated in the county to its Hwy 90 landfill.

When county council established the HCSWA by ordinance 60-90 in December 1990, the number one paragraph in that ordinance states, “There is a need in Horry County to develop an acceptable alternative method of solid waste disposal and to reduce the tonnage of solid waste disposal in sanitary landfills due to the County’s high water table and other geologic characteristics that make utilization and expansion of existing landfills and development of new landfills especially expensive and difficult.”

The HCSWA has never attempted to move solid waste out of the county, as its establishing ordinance directs, and, with flow control, does exactly the opposite.

I strongly disagree with Worley that a solid waste Gestapo is needed. It is high time to remove the HCSWA’s Gestapo like tendencies, with respect to managing the waste stream in Horry County.

Approving the proposed amendment, which will allow some of the waste generated in the county to be deposited in landfills outside the county, would be proper in both the stated intent and in the spirit of the ordinance which established the HCSWA and which the HCSWA has continuously ignored.