The point here is simply that the total amount of space necessary will not be all that large. Few nations are as substantially endowed with uncongested territory as ours is, and there is appropriate land available even in some relatively populous areas. The survey pinpointed sites that represented 200 square miles of territory, an area constituting only 1 percent of the region's land area. Yet with all this available land, the state has, since 1982, closed down 349 landfills and opened only 6. The obstacles to new sanitary landfills these days are to some extent monetary.
Landfills are indeed expensive.
But more important, the obstacles are psychological and political. Nobody wants a garbage dump in his or her backyard. It is ironic. We have convinced ourselves that our biggest flaw is that we are wasteful and profligate, while a much more serious flaw goes unnoticed. As a nation, on the subject of garbage at least, we have become politically impotent.