What an interesting question.

This is one place where informal oral history might help.
The older locals (retired military, non-military) around your base might be a 
great source of info.
If you have a couple of communities nearby, their older or retired public-works 
employees might have some answers, even if the corporate memory at the base 
specifically has transferred out.

Oh, and the *really* toxic stuff? ... probably poured down abandoned mines.
(Don't ask me how I know that.)

Thinking of that, got any abandoned quarries in the area? Copper mines? Maybe 
your trash is there.
*cough, cough*


Gwyn Alcock
Riverside, CA



________________________________
From: Todd Hanson <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Fri, August 12, 2011 8:36:13 AM
Subject: Talkin' Trash

Greetings,

I'd like the group's thoughts on a small dilemma I'm having. I'm investigating a 
series of Cold War era (early 1960s) missile ballistic missile sites in New 
Mexico. To date, our site investigations have found no ground evidence of trash 
dumps and the site plans make no references to such. Likewise, the site 
histories also make no reference to trash collection services. So, where did the 
trash go? Obviously, if we could locate any site local dumps it could be a gold 
mine of data. Now given the specific site, I realize that no one may had the 
have exact answer, but I do have a couple general questions that the group may 
be able to shed some light upon.

First, is anyone aware of any semi-seminal works on the history of solid waste 
management in the United States? I've found Lanier Hickman's American Alchemy: 
The History of Solid Waste Management in the United States, but it focuses 
mostly on urban efforts and the rise of recycling, and Rathje and  Murphy's 
Rubbish! The Archaeology of Garbage to be insightful, but not completely. The 
site I'm working is really rural and annexed to a small New Mexico town.

Now I'm actually old enough to actually remember a time when trash collection in 
rural areas did not exist and I'm sure it varied from town to town with the 
enactment of federal waste management laws in the mid-1960s, but I've not yet 
found anything that really documents this paradigm shift from home or local 
dumps to municipal waste processing as it relates to archaeology. Maybe such a 
single historical work (or works) simply doesn't exist? But maybe others have 
pondered this dilemma before?

The second question is aimed at those of you who may have some 20th Century 
military experience or at least more experience than I with the archaeology of 
US military sites. How is trash generally handled in the military? Did bases 
normally (in my case Walker Air Force base) have their own trash collection 
services? Perhaps they incinerated what they could and sent the rest to a dump? 
The trash had to go somewhere.

Obviously, much more archive and library work on this topic is in my future, but 
any thoughts you folks might have on this will be most welcome.

Thanks,

Todd Hanson
-- Todd A. Hanson, Ph.D.
Los Alamos National Laboratory
Los Alamos, New Mexico 87545
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