Eco-Vista clean choice in Tontitown landfill renaming contest
Posted on Friday, June 6, 2008
TONTITOWN — Northwest Arkansas’ biggest trash pile got a new pretty name Thursday.
Eco-Vista.
Waste Management Inc., owner of the 112-acre Tontitown landfill, intends to turn the landfill into a place people will recognize as environmentally friendly and a wildlife habitat, said Kevin Gardner, the company’s senior district manager.
George Wheatley, Waste Management’s governmental affairs director in Arkansas, latched onto Eco-Vista, a name suggested among 321 possibilities in a landfill-renaming contest. Names were suggested by 75 nonprofit groups in Benton, Madison and Washington counties.
“As soon as George said it, I grabbed a dictionary,” Gardner said. “I knew what ‘eco’ meant, but I wanted to look up ‘vista.’ That means clear view. From the top of the landfill, you can see everywhere in Northwest Arkansas.” Horses for Healing employee Clayton Studyvin submitted Eco-Vista and netted a $ 5, 000 prize for the Bentonville organization that operates a therapeutic horseback riding program for children.
“There’s not a lot to say,” Studyvin told 100 people who gathered on a breezy Thursday afternoon at a landfill-renaming ceremony. “I had in my mind what a very environmentally friendly facility would be — a vista.” There were dozens of suggestions but only a few poked fun at the prospect of naming a pile of trash.
Among the names that didn’t make the cut: Discard With Delight, Eco Echo, Clean and Green, Eco Efficiency Depot, Habitat for Trash, Funky Town, Hog Heaven, Waste to Wonderful, Land of Opportunity Landfill, Down to Earth Environmental Renaissance Center and The Abyss.
None of the speakers on Thursday mentioned the landfill’s nickname given by a group of neighbors: Mount Trashmore.
In 2001, the landfill neighbors began a fight against a 46-acre expansion that was eventually permitted by the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality.
Mount Trashmore wasn’t suggested by any of the nonprofits and it wasn’t original. A former landfill that’s now a 165-acre park in Virginia Beach, Va., bears the name.
“I’m glad we didn’t use it then,” Gardner said.
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