Trash

IN WHAT HAS become a kinder, gentler NFL since Roger Goodell took over, yesterday the commissioner added his latest laugher to the file. According to a report on ProFootballTalk.com, Goodell is looking to set guidelines during the offseason in an effort to scale down the amount of trash talk between teams in the lead-up to a game. While he appreciates the passion, Goodell feels a lot of the talk has shown a lack of "respect for game. " Last week, the league office issued warnings to teams in light of the back-and-forth - well, mostly forth from the Jets - between New York and the Patriots before Sunday's AFC Divisional Game in Foxborough, Mass.

Halle Berry had a bit of ugliness creep into her life this week when hackers vandalized the Academy Award winner's Web site,www.Hallewood.com, the New York Daily News is reporting. The hacker put a mustache and beard on a photo of the "Monster's Ball" star and mentioned Nicole Kidman in a message. An e-mail address - which included the letters "KKK" - was left. A spokesman for the FBI told the New York tab, "We could look into it as a violation of civil rights, according to hate-crimes guidelines.

From the outside, Cobbs Creek Park appears to be an urban oasis. But wander inside around Whitby Avenue in West Philadelphia and see stripped and torched cars sprawled on the curb, surrounded by mounds of trash. On the Delaware County side, the bodies of two people were found recently. Both were torched. One of them may have been involved in a Southwest Philadelphia drug turf war. For the older city neighbors, Cobbs Creek Park is a reminder of how wonderful their community used to be and how far it has fallen.

In the Hoosier heartland this is what New Jersey looks like: A beer-bellied guy wearing a Cape May tank top and a Yankees cap, chomping on a stogie while depositing his trash on the front steps. "Good moe-ning, I'm from New Joisey. Here's today's garbage. I'll just dump it right here," says the man in a TV commercial that played through most of Indiana this summer. Dropping a bulging bag topped off with a copy of New Jersey Monthly magazine and a banana peel in front of a horrified Hoosier couple, the man says, "Have a bee-u-tee-ful day. " New Jersey and You, Perfect Together, it's not. What it is is the hit commercial of Daniel Coats' campaign for senator from Indiana.

LIKE TODD CORABI (letter June 21), I was the recipient of a $25 fine for the transgression of having a trash can in front of my house. I can empathize with Mr. Corabi's outrage, but I am not ready to bolt the city because of overzealous enforcement by the newly empowered trash police. But what improvements in quality of life can be claimed if these new regulations discourage even one good citizen from doing a good deed? Ticket-writers should issue a written warning before fining residents for breaking the new rules that are largely unknown to the public.

The Philadelphia trash problem has a very simple solution, and that is to divide the city into areas, the size of which can be one square mile or smaller if the voters so decide. The people in each area would then have a choice of how the trash from their area would be disposed of. The only stipulation is that the trash generated by an area must be disposed of in that area. If people elect not to have some form of disposal facility in their area, the trash is left to pile up within that area.

Accusations of environmental racism have thrown a snag into the Rendell administration's plans to sign multi-year trash disposal contracts worth up to $300 million. Objections to sending about 100,000 tons of trash a year to a controversial refuse-burning plant in Chester caused City Council's Finance Committee to delay action on the bills yesterday. The Rendell administration wants the bills approved by the committee this week in order to execute the money-saving contracts to begin July 1. The administration estimates the contracts will save taxpayers $45 million in the four guaranteed years of the contract, and up to $74 million if five option years are added.

A two-month police sting operation focusing on attempts to bribe sanitation workers to pick up trash illegally from city businesses has led to the issuance of warrants for 21 people, Mayor Goode and District Attorney Ronald Castille announced at a City Hall press conference today. Earlier, a source told the Daily News that in the operation undercover police posed both as sanitation workers and as employees or owners of city businesses to determine whether area businesses were offering bribes to have trash removed and whether Streets Department employees were accepting them.

The city is again negotiating with the son of a powerful municipal union leader on a potentially lucrative contract to haul away Philadelphia trash. Streets Commissioner Harry M. Perks confirmed this week that the city is talking seriously about a trash-hauling contract with William Stout, son of Earl Stout, president of District Council 33 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. The union represents 14,000 blue-collar city employees, including 2,500 sanitation workers.

Pine Hill probably will be sending its trash to Scranton instead of Philadelphia, beginning next week - and saving a lot of money in the bargain. The Pine Hill council authorized Mayor Joseph Nunes to enter an agreement with Atlas Transfer Co. of Chester to compact the trash from Pine Hill and truck it to Scranton for disposal. Nunes said the agreement would save the borough about $70,000 the first year alone. Now the borough sends its trash on a day-to-day basis to The Forge trash-transfer station in the Tacony section of Philadelphia.