One piece of unfinished legislative business that needs to
be addressed is a shortage of funding for county recycling
programs. Such programs reduce the burden on landfills and
extend their life, while returning reusable materials to the
product stream, in many cases at a savings in energy.
Unfortunately, Commonwealth Court put an end to a perfectly
valid means of funding recycling -- a per ton tax on waste
dumped at landfills and incinerators. The General Assembly
needs to get over its willingness to sacrifice valuable
efforts to avoid confronting paying for them and permit
counties to charge a recycling tax on municipal waste. In a
2005 Northumberland County case, the court found that
counties did not have the legal authority to impose a tax on
landfill and incinerator waste.
Consequently, recycling efforts in the 37 counties
(including Adams, Cumberland, Dauphin and Perry) that
imposed such a tax have been curtailed, in some cases
seriously so. A remedy in the form of House Bill 934, which
has the support of numerous local representatives, came
close to a vote in the full chamber on July 8, but was
pulled. According to David Masur of PennEnvironment, which
is seeking action on the bill, the House leadership decided
not to send the bill to the Senate unless the leaders in the
other chamber agreed in advance to take it up. Senate
leaders responded that they would not review the issue
unless the House sent over the bill.
There is every reason to believe that, minus the political
gamesmanship, if put to a vote this legislation, which has
bipartisan support, would pass both houses. And it would
bring important restrictions on a program that worked well
until the court cut it short, in particular limiting the
recycling fee to $4 a ton and requiring that all funds be
used for recycling. Previously, two counties (Monroe and
Pike) charged as high as $7 a ton.
It is appropriate that a fee on waste disposal serve as a
means of helping to pay for programs that divert materials
from the waste stream and reuse them. HB 934 would provide
about $6.7 million a year for recycling programs for the
same counties that used it in the past, according to a
PennEnvironment estimate. That's a modest price to pay
for recycling perfectly good materials and working toward a
cleaner environment.
