Gnats

The following is the letter I sent to my city’s recycling office and my city council member. It’s been over 3 days, and I have not heard back, so I’m making this an open letter.

Honorable Friends and Public Servants,

I live in an urban area of mixed single homes and apartments. As I sit here composing this email, I have to pause every few seconds to swat at gnats hovering between me and my computer screen, or try not to be distracted as they float between me and my display.

I live in on one side of a duplex on the backlot, behind my landlord’s house, so my front door faces the alley. Many may look down their nose at my choice of dwelling, but long ago, my wife and I chose the urban life over the suburban life. I have lived in my current apartment for over 3 decades and never had this problem until 3 or 4 weeks ago. Yesterday I finally found the source of the problem. I walked around and casually lifted the lid of my neighbor’s recently distributed, city-provided composting bin and saw several hundred flies feasting on the meager inch-deep organic waste sitting inside the four foot deep bin.

The first and most obvious solution to this problem is to spray a noxious pesticide into the container weekly. That would defeat your purpose, wouldn’t it? The second solution would be to seal the compostable material in plastic bags, also defeating the purpose of having the bin. The third solution is for all of us who don’t want to be inundated by annoying and unsanitary insect infestations to just never use the bins for their stated purpose.

I have no air conditioning, so my screened doors and windows remain open on hot nights. Although my window and door screens prevent the flies from getting in, the gnats are small enough to penetrate the mesh. Also, the biggest infestation comes down into my bathrooms and kitchen from the vents that run to the roof.

Living with this unsanitary infestation is not an option for me. I wake up each morning to a gnat squatting on my toothbrush and have to carefully check each drinking glass for insects before filling it. This morning I was careless and found 3 drowned gnats in my orange juice. It’s also impossible to keep all of them out of my refrigerator although I hope they starve in there from the lack of anything to eat because all the food inside is sealed in containers.

If people start to come down with diseases unheard of in our cities since the 1800’s when the streets were full of horse manure, I can foresee class action suits being filed against the city (and the state if it is the state that mandates it). In fact I might even advocate such an action myself if no effective mitigating measures are taken. Your very polite representative on the hotline suggested using paper bags to seal the compost. Obviously a paper bag does not make a tight seal around the compost, so it would be ineffective, not to mention expensive and the use of that many paper bags for such a purpose is environmentally deleterious.

In examining my compost receptacle, I see that it it is not completely sealed. There is an well-concealed rectangular opening under the lid handle that gives plenty of room for insects to come and go at will and presumably to vent the unhealthy odors of decaying trash to the rest of the neighborhood.

I walk the streets of my beach town almost daily, and there are at least 2 signs on every block asking people to clean up after their dogs. I see most dog owners carrying small plastic bags to collect their dog’s poop, wrap it up, carry it home, and, if they follow your plan, empty the plastic bag into their compost bin and throw the soiled plastic bag into their landfill-destined trash bin. I have been involved in recycling since the 70’s, and I can tell you that doesn’t make any sense and is not environmentally friendly.

In any case, I have a few questions.

1. What will be done to mitigate the defective (unsealed) compost bins?

2. Was an environmental impact statement filed before beginning this program? If so, where can I read it?

That was the letter. Now that I’ve had some time to reflect, I’d like to add a few things.

Of course they have a list of not-so-helpful tips for using their compost bins, like wrapping your organic waste in wax paper, newspaper, or paper bags and storing it in the refrigerator until collection day, so my obnoxious, unwary houseguest will get a surprise when he raids the refrigerator in the middle of the night. Bonus! Also they recommend sprinkling baking soda on, organic waste when I put it in the bin. Sure, we’re all going to get right on that, aren’t we?

The city’s next helpful tip is to layer garden clippings on top of food discards. As many do in my beach town, I live in an apartment. I have no yard. I have no garden. I have no trees to trim. I have no grass to cut. Neither do many houses in my area because they’ve heeded the city’s earlier urgings to replace water-devouring lawns with rocks and cacti. Except now the city recommends I take the hose and clean out the giant, 64 gallon organic waste container every week. Not that I’m allowed to use water to wash my car. That would be wasteful and evil. BTW, one of our big problems they warn us about every storm is untreated water carrying organic waste into the ocean, but I’m sure a million households spraying all their sewage, excuse me, compost, down the storm drains won’t be a problem. Good luck, surfers! Don’t pay any attention to that persistent cough and diarrhea. Cleans out the lungs and colon.

I’m looking forward to the next mandate requiring me to do an hour of exercise on a stationary bicycle connected to power the grid when the sun goes down. Hey, regular exercise is good for my heart-health, right? And I can drop that gym membership! If I get a bid in early enough, I won’t have to take the 3-4 am time slot. As an old man, I’m likely to not be able to sleep through the night anyway. I’m sure the disabled will be able to apply for an exemption. Politicians do think of everything after all.

California has already mandated that no non-electric cars or trucks can be sold in the state after 2030. Also they’ve passed a law that declares that, if you plug your legally-required electric car in overnight to recharge it, they will steal whatever they want of your battery’s power to run the electrical grid at night when their solar panel farms aren’t working rather than send you electricity to recharge your car. Of course, they’ll make you pay for “consuming” the electricity they steal from you. What, do you hate the environment or something?

I’m sure the next step will be to save money from the sewage recycling plant that is meant to turn sewage into absolutely, totally, double pinky swear, safe, clean water for me to drink out of the tap. Instead they’ll just spray the raw sewage over everybody’s lawn. We’ll all be greener for it.

3 responses to “Gnats”

  1. dumping diatomaceous (excuse the spelling please) earth on top of organic waste is probably a first approach worth evaluating.
    many good points- obviously (all kidding aside) you should run for local office- you cannot possibly be the only person with these observations and feelings

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  2. May I recommend moving to an apartment that doesn’t have a view of the alleyway used to store dumpsters? Many years ago we lived in an 8 story building, top floor, and had a nice view of the city and surrounding area that wasn’t so nice but hey, we were ‘above it all’. There was a warehouse immediately below us and was busy with the forklift going ‘beep beep beep’ all day long but we were both at work so it really didn’t matter, until that business started a weekend shift and we were treated to the beeping noise all day long. We left when our lease was up.

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    1. While moving might temporarily solve my personal problem, I have talked to others in the local community and find the problem is widespread. In fact it has been, perhaps inadvertently, designed by the city to be spread all throughout the city.

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