Happening in Antarctica : Garbage Treatment Improvements

We have said that NSF's research program does not pack out its garbage. CBS has
responded by interviewing a contract company worker in McMurdo :



These changes are recent and a welcome change from the way NSF has traditionally operated, at least in regard to garbage. This is not all there is to this story, however...



For many years (since 1900 possibly) there has been no removal of US garbage from Antarctica. So it has just accumulated. Japan, has had a similar problem, but their program has been less intense and shorter lived than the US program :

TOKYO, Japan (AP) -- Japanese researchers in Antarctica are getting serious about cleaning up the half-century's worth of garbage piled up at their base on the southernmost continent, an official said Thursday. Building materials, cast-off snow vehicles and fuel drums have collected at the research base since the first expedition was launched in 1956. By 1998, the garbage weighed about 550 tons and research teams began clearing the pile. Now, those efforts are being accelerated in an international effort to clean up Antarctica. Japan's Science Ministry hopes to send the remaining 370 tons of garbage home within four years, ministry official Suguru Suzuki said. Posted: CNN, Thursday, June 17, 2004 10:47 AM EDT (1447 GMT)

The USAP program has a bigger problem. There are military people in addition to the USAP people. I believe the military has taken a pro-active stance, whereas NSF tends to diminish the problem's importance for the sake of budget. Indeed recent kitchen refuse and pop cans are being neatly crated up for transport back to the states. However, in the bay around McMurdo lurks a garbage graveyard similar to Pearl Harbor, or Solomon Islands. Standard NSF practice was to drag refuse out onto the sea ice and leave it there for the spring thaw. Many of the same people who ran this operation like a mining town, are still administering the NSF program today.

In the news you get the story of the helicopter retrieved, which makes a nice photo-op, but they neglect to tell you about all the refuse out in the field camps, and frozen sewage. For years garbage was thrown into open pits. I do not know if the remote field camps continue to throw refuse into burn pits, but I haven't heard anything to the contrary. I wonder if the Co2 and soot from these pits might contaminate surficial measurements? Holes were/are burned into the ice for sewage deposition. Years and years of this practice at the South Pole station, has endangered the safety of their water supply. The danger here is obviously to the personnel at the station. One guy quipped "There is no danger to the wildlife." If there had been bears, as they have in Prudhoe Bay, they would've been more careful with their refuse. Perhaps we should bring some polar bears there.

Besides ocean stowage around McMurdo, there are now covered dumps where once garbage decorated the surface. What happens to this? In refuse pits at lower latitudes they biodegrade. In McMurdo this process would be very slow. It just sits there. At least its out of sight. This is not unlike the process one would have on the moon. It is expensive operationally to transport this stuff there and back. They are researchers, right? Maybe this garbage is not green, and they could find out what could be done.

The problem of McMurdo sewage remains a problem, and has been a problem all along. See Fecal Coliforms in Antarctica. No doubt this impact is serious, as thousands of people shuffle through this area enroute to remote field camps. So McMurdo sewage continues to flow into the ocean water.

So we conclude that the CBS report is really misleading. It is about as accurate as saying Chinese factories are clean, neat, and wonderful places to work. Have you seen those reports? No doubt environmental groups need to continue to press for improvements.