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Joint Conservation Committee Hears Review Of Recycling Law, Recommendations - Video Blog
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The Joint Legislative Air and Water Pollution Control and Conservation Committee this week held a hearing to hear a status of the first 21 years of Pennsylvania's Recycling Program as well as take recommendations on how the program can be improved.
The Chair of the Committee is Rep. Scott Hutchinson (R-Venango) and the Vice Chair is Sen. Ray Musto (D-Luzerne), the only member of the General Assembly still in office who sponsored the original bill creating the recycling program in 1988.
Tom Fidler, DEP Deputy Secretary for Waste, Air and Radiation Management, told the Committee the recycling and waste programs authorized by Act 101 in 1988 cannot continue as they are due to a significant reduction in funding available under the $2/ton municipal waste recycling fee.
Originally, the fee generated about $48 million a year, but now a dramatic reduction in waste imported to Pennsylvania from other states and waste generated in the state reduced revenues to $38 million last year.
At a minimum, DEP recommended extending the sunset date for the existing $2 fee for another 10 years. In response, Sen. Musto said he planned to introduce legislation eliminating the sunset date entirely. Fidler also said the agency was planning further increases in permit fees to help fund waste management programs.
As a result of this decrease, Fidler said DEP has been exploring other models for the program, including giving counties more authority to administer waste programs, creating one, integrated waste management program looking at waste disposal, recycling, household hazardous waste collection and other elements as one initiative and instituting bans on certain materials going to landfills and resource recovery facilities for disposal.
Pennsylvania's recycling program now covers 91 percent of the state's population with 440 mandated communities and 1,250 volunteer communities offering recycling services.
Tim O'Donnell, Penn Waste Industries Association, said the private waste industry added $3 billion in economic value to the economy of Pennsylvania and accounted for 31,500 jobs. His group said with private waste companies taking on the bulk of the responsibility for waste disposal, counties should be refocused on developing plans for expanding recycling opportunities.
Robert Bylone, PA Recycling Markets Center, provided an overview of the Center and its activities to expand the opportunities for recycling materials into useful products.
John Frederick, Professional Recyclers of Pennsylvania, told the Committee there are many examples of successful county recycling and waste management programs, pointing to both Centre and Lancaster counties, who designed their programs in different ways. However, without adequate financial support and creating integrated waste management programs in every county, the program would be hard-pressed to expand. He pointed out the 1988 $2 recycling fee was now worth about $1.11.
Larry Myers, PA Resources Council, said environmental programs like recycling should not be the first to be used to balance the state budget like it was in the 2008-09 budget when $15 million was taken from the Recycling Fund. He also expressed support for an integrated waste management program and encouraged an expansion of recycling education efforts.
Video Blog: Larry Myers Offers Comments On Recycling Program
Myers also pointed to examples of innovative recycling programs, like RecycleBank, which has used market incentives to more than triple recycling in some areas. He also expressed support for the reauthorized of the $2 recycling fee in House Bill 961 and for authorizing counties to charge a fee for their waste management program services.
Recycling, he said, has been one of the most successful environmental programs ever enacted resulting in recycling over 45 million tons of waste since 1988 and reducing beverage container litter by 64 percent, according to the Department of Transportation.
The PA Resources Council was one of the primary groups behind the enactment of the recycling law in 1988.
Eric Conrad, Conrad and Associates, provided the Committee with information on landfill closure requirements based on his experience with the closure of the Pottstown Landfill.
Doug Hill, County Commissioners Association of PA, and Elam Herr, PA State Association of Township Supervisors, presented joint testimony to the Committee. They expressed their support for both reauthorizing the $2 recycling fee and for authorizing county waste management fees.
Both testified that recycling programs today were in a state of crisis because of dramatic reductions in the value of the materials they collect, for example, metal cans last year sold for $430 a ton and this year they are at $18 a ton. While these revenues have dropped, they said, program costs of increased.
They also provided comments on the DEP proposal to institute expanded bans on the disposal of certain materials--
"A more recent, and more perplexing, problem is the Department of Environmental Protection's plan to prohibit any landfill from accepting any of Act 10 1 's eight listed recyclable materials (clear glass; colored glass; plastics; aluminum; steel and bimetallic cans; high grade office paper; corrugated paper; and newsprint). The issue is that counties are required to plan for, and municipalities are required to provide for collection at curbside, only three of the eight. We have met with DEP staff to determine how our three at curbside becomes eight at the landfill gate, and their only reply is that "the market will take care of it."
"We and our county partners find this response to be wholly inadequate. It ignores the broad array of public and private collection mechanisms, the voluntary collection programs, the nonmandated municipalities, the mix of source-separated and single-stream collection systems, and drop-off collection systems. It ignores planning relationships between counties and municipalities and contractual relationships between collectors and municipalities and between collectors and landfills. Act 10 1 was developed in response to a failed policy that relied on the market to fill the needs caused by rapid loss of disposal capacity. But that is what the Department again proposes in this instance - "hoping" the market will fill in the gulf between the municipal and landfill mandates.
"Prohibiting all recyclables at landfills is a public policy debate by itself. And if we ultimately agree to pursue it, it certainly should not be done in a top-down way that will throw existing collection practices and relationships into disarray." |
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4/24/2009 |
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