Just three weeks after Republic agreed to buy Allied, the solid waste industry once again finds itself firmly in the media spotlight with yesterday’s announcement that Waste Management is seeking to scuttle the Republic-Allied deal by buying Republic. Here’s a brief round-up of what some major media outlets are saying about the offer:

Reuters: “Republic shares had been off 17 percent since word leaked of the company’s plan to bid for Allied, which created the opening Waste Management needed to offer a competing proposal, JPMorgan analyst Scott Levine wrote in a note to clients.

Republic’s strong business in Las Vegas is an especially compelling asset, said [Waste Management CEO David] Steiner, who said Waste Management hadn’t yet started to figure out how many landfills the combined company would have.”

Forbes.com: “Speaking at a Forbes conference several months ago, CEO Steiner said that one key to Waste Management’s future — and a possible driver of the Republic deal — is cornering the waste-to-energy business. With 227 landfills, the company already produces 2 gigawatts of ‘green’ power for 2 million homes. Waste Management burns trash to produce electricity, by tapping the methane produced in burning to create natural gas.”

Bloomberg.com: “Waste Management would likely borrow to pay for Republic, ‘adding considerable debt to the capital structure versus where they are today,’ Fitch analyst Stephen Brown said today in a telephone interview. ‘Equity investors are looking at the overall cost and having some concern about that.”’

The Wall Street Journal: “The three largest U.S. waste companies control more than two-thirds of the nation’s permitted landfill capacity, according to a February 2007 report by the Solid Waste Association of North America, a group of mostly municipal trash officials. A merger of $13-billion Waste Management and $3-billion Republic, in sales, would leave just under half the country’s permitted landfill capacity in the control of the combined company.”

Business Week: “A Republic-Allied deal would create a company with a market share of 17% to 18% in North America, a credible rival to Waste Management’s 24% share, according to Stewart Scharf, an equity analyst at Standard & Poor’s. But Waste Management’s Republic bid would boost its market share to 30%, putting even more distance between Waste Management and its second-place rival, Allied Waste, with a market share of 10% or 11% … Robert Lande, a law professor at the University of Baltimore and a director of the American Antitrust Institute, says by itself a 30% market share wouldn’t raise concerns—at least judging by the record of regulators in the Bush Administration. However, garbage hauling is a very local business, and the competitive landscape would need to be analyzed metropolitan area by metropolitan area, Lande says.”

Yesterday, NPR’s All Things Considered featured a remarkable story about Tijuana, Mexico resident Miroslava Enciso Limon, who after visiting one of the city’s notorious dumps at age 17 and seeing the families who lived there, dedicated herself to improving the way trash was handled in the city. After obtaining a degree in industrial engineering, she designed a machine to sort waste and recycling, convinced the city’s leaders to adopt it, and hired the dump’s former residents as employees. Well worth a listen.

From Time.com comes news that the Isle of Wight in Great Britain will flick the switch this summer on a $16 million, 2.3-megawatt gasification plant. According to the article, the plant, the first of its kind in the United Kingdom, will take in 30,000 tons of trash — or “rubbish,” as the Brits would say — a year to provide electricity for 2,000 households.

Of note from the article: “When it comes to trash, Britain, like much of the world, needs help. Its reputation as a green and pleasant land is at risk from the 16.9 million tons of trash it tossed into landfills last year — that’s more than any other country in the European Union. The Local Government Association recently warned that despite devoting 109 square miles to burial, Britain may run out of landfill space within nine years.”

Also: the Institution of Civil Engineers says that the trash that Britain landfills could provide up to 17 percent of its energy needs.

And finally, to help spread the gasification concept, the plant will feature a visitors’ center. Start planning your vacation now.

to out-of-state landfills we go.

David Caruso of the The Associated Press has penned an overview of the issues surrounding the out-of-state disposal of municipal solid waste.

Michael Keller, a member of Fox Township, Pa.’s, Board of Supervisors, tells Caruso that while he has some concerns about what effects accepting more than 1,300 tons of garbage a day from New York City will have on the township’s landfill, the township has benefited substantially. “We’re rich,” he says in the article. “We have less than 4,000 people living here, and we have millions of dollars in the bank.”