Because
it is an important piece of environmental responsibility, government
from the local level on up should help people to do recycling. For
years, several dozen
Pennsylvania
counties did so by charging a per-ton fee on trash collected within the
counties to create a fund to be used for recycling programs. Act 101 of
1988, the Municipal Waste Planning, Recycling and Waste Reduction Act,
enabled just this.
However, a decision by the Commonwealth Court (Waste Haulers
Association, et al, v. County of Northumberland) held that the counties
did not have authority under Act 101 to impose and collect these fees.
Therefore, in the Lehigh Valley region and across the commonwealth,
counties with these recycling programs will take serious budget hits.
In some of them, county officials were forced to terminate recycling
because they did not have the funding needed to keep them going.
Unless something is done, counties all over the state will be losing a great amount of revenue. In this area alone, Lehigh County would be losing about $500,000 in annual revenue. Carbon County would lose about $200,000, and Monroe County a little over $500,000.
Furthermore, Commonwealth Court held that the counties themselves can't
fix the legal problem themselves. It will be up to the Legislature,
whose law the court found fault with, to take care of the do-over.
And so, House Bill 934 was introduced last year by Rep. Mario Scavello, R-Monroe.
Among local supporters are Rep. Joseph Brennan, D-Lehigh, and Douglas Reichley, R-Lehigh. Therefore, it is a bipartisan bill.
According to PennEnvironment and other environmental groups supporting
the measure, HB 934 would allow counties to reinstate the trash fee
funding system for their recycling efforts. It also improves on Act 101
by requiring that all the money collected would go toward the
respective counties' recycling programs. Finally, the bill would place
a cap on the per-ton fee amount that counties can set for their
recycling -- $4 per ton.
The funding mechanisms for Pennsylvania's county-wide recycling
programs need to be reauthorized, and soon. If the General Assembly
waits until after this legislative session ends on Dec. 1, 2008, the
measure would have to be reintroduced next year, delaying relief for
the affected counties by at least another 12 to 24 months, or maybe
even longer. Since it was an error by the Legislature (in the judges'
opinion) that punched a hole in the county budgets, it's the
Legislature's duty to do the fix.
The purpose and goals of recycling fees are good ones. In fact, we wish
more counties would adopt a county-wide recycling program.
Conscientious citizens want easy ways to recycle household hazardous
wastes, such as old electronics and motor oil. The county-wide
recycling programs allows citizens to do this.
