[GreenYes] Out of State Waste

["Peter Anderson" <anderson@recycleworlds.org>]

    There is an article in this week's Waste News ("Hauler to fight decision") indicating that the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld an Ohio flow control-type law. In this case, localities were authorized by state statute to require all solid waste facilities to collect a $5.30 ton fee to be designated as eligible to receive waste from within its jurisdication. Facilities not agreeing to levy the fee were denied such designation, meaning that no waste in that locality could be sent to it. The court sustained the law because, even though the fee and designation process imposed a restraint on interstate commerce, the amount of the fee was "in line with the cost of ensuring safe and sanitary management of the county's output of waste."

    There is something more that it would seem might be shoe horned into this ruling.  Current Subtitle D landfill regulations are now recognized as being predicated on a fallacy. Since the dry tomb containment systems will last for the 30 year post-closure period, but after that time of financal liability for the operator has passed all manmade barriers "will ultimately fail" (according to the EPA), major superfund remediation efforts will be required by the localities in the future.  The present value of major superfund costs (i.e. in the tens of millions of dollars), then, could -- should -- be imposed by localities on private landfills in order to protect themselves from a financial meltdown decades in the future.

                                                                    Peter
_____________________________________________
Peter Anderson
RECYCLEWORLDS CONSULTING
4513 Vernon Blvd. Suite 15
Madison, WI 53705-4964
(608) 231-1100/Fax (608) 233-0011/Mobile (608) 345-0381
email: anderson@recycleworlds.org
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