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June 8, 2003Solid waste industry claims landfills can handle imported trash; others aren't so sureTRAVERSE CITY - Remember the town dump? The memory is as distant as the term itself. They are called landfills now. Sanitary landfills, to be precise. Better science, smarter living and tighter regulations have transformed the practice of literally throwing out the trash into a highly specialized and costly industry.People in the solid waste business in Michigan describe this industry as a remarkable success story. Fewer, larger landfills have replaced the many. Waste is better monitored with less environmental impact than ever before. In Michigan, talk of trash has primarily focused around recycling efforts and monthly bills. Until now. Toronto needed a new place to get rid of its garbage. More than 100 dump trucks filled with Canadian trash now roll into Michigan daily. Coming with it are new worries of a burgeoning dumping ground, higher trash bills and public sentiment turning away from recycling and other trash reduction efforts. But as lawmakers scramble for ways to stem the tide of imported trash, people in the industry and others describe many of the efforts as, if not futile, unnecessary. From dumps to landfills Thousands of dumps nationwide dotted the countryside in the 1970s and early '80s - at one time totaling nearly 12,000. Since then the number of active landfills has dwindled to about 2,500, according to estimates from the Michigan Waste Industries Association. During that span, landfills have changed from being literal dumping holes with no environmental monitoring to multimillion dollar facilities operating under tight state and federal regulations. The development cost for a new landfill "cell," or section, is about $500,000 per acre, said association spokeswoman Deb Wudyka. Coupled with residents' acceptance of new landfills anywhere but in their back yard, few new landfills are being constructed. Michigan has not had a new landfill open in more than five years. As a result, existing landfills accept waste from a much larger area. So far, significant regulatory changes to reverse that trend have been thwarted by both free-trade rules and political differences. People in the industry acknowledge the public's aversion to any more landfills and to the practice of accepting waste from other states and countries. "We understand the emotional scenario that surrounds this issue," said Tom Horton, vice president of governmental affairs in Michigan for Waste Management Inc., the nation's second-largest waste hauler with operations throughout northern Michigan. "People don't like the concept of waste crossing their borders." The amount of new waste, however, is not a cause for concern, Horton and others in the waste industry say. "We have more than enough capacity to meet our needs for the foreseeable future," Horton said. "That's why the industry doesn't see the out-of-state waste as a critical issue." Technological advances, such as waste incineration plants and bioreactor landfills that fast-forward decomposition, are expected to extend the capacity of existing landfills even further. Environmentalists and some policy-makers have a far different view. They say the state is at risk by the widespread transport of trash in and around Michigan. The concerns range from having minimum control over what kind of trash is brought into Michigan, such as hazardous materials, to shortening the useful life of Michigan's more than 50 licensed facilities, to becoming a disincentive for people to recycle. "To me, it seems like it's a utility that's gone out of control," said Randy Smith, the resource recovery coordinator for Grand Traverse County. Toronto trash trouble The recent outcry over the state's solid waste situation is due to the influx of Canadian trash to landfills in southeast Michigan. Starting Jan. 1 the city of Toronto began shipping all of its trash - estimated at more than 1 million tons a year - to a landfill in Wayne County's Sumpter Township. Since 1999 the landfill accepted about 60 percent of the city's waste. After a Toronto landfill closed last year, the city was unable to find another dump site in Ontario. The city negotiated with several landfills until reaching a long-term contract with Republic Waste Service's Carleton Farms landfill outside of Detroit. The caravan of additional trash has touched off a flurry of legislative activity both in Lansing and Washington. State and federal lawmakers are aggressively pursuing measures designed to curb the amount of out-of-state trash coming into the Great Lakes state. The importing of large amounts of trash to Michigan is not new. Trash from Ontario has been coming into Michigan since the mid-'90s, and Canadian garbage represented about 11.5 percent of all the trash disposed of in Michigan last year, according to the state Department of Environmental Quality. Although Michigan and its municipal governments can legally restrict the flow of garbage between counties in the state, federal and international commerce regulations limit the state's ability to restrict garbage from Canada or from other states. Under a 1978 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, solid waste was ruled to be an article of commerce - like wheat, produce or electronic goods - and subject to the constitutional protection of the interstate commerce clause. Since then there have been a handful of attempts by states to restrict the transportation of trash across borders, but those efforts have been struck down in court. As a result of the current regulatory and economic conditions, Michigan has become the nation's third-largest importer of trash, according to the DEQ. Because of its relatively low disposal rates - around $20 per ton, about half the rate of neighboring states - Michigan receives about 20 percent of its nearly 20-million ton annual amount of trash from outside its borders. "We are concerned about its impact on our ability to handle our trash in the long-term," said Pat Spitzley of the DEQ. "It puts us in the position of having to keep approving landfill expansions to maintain the long-term capacity we need for our communities." Only a small amount of Canadian trash has reached northern Michigan. Waste Management's City Environmental Services landfill south of Waters in Crawford County took in three to four loads of Canadian waste in April hauled from Sudbury, Ontario. But its arrival still has been alarming to area officials. "We were very surprised," said Bruce Patrick, environmental monitor for Crawford County. With northern lower Michigan being somewhat isolated from neighboring states and Canada, area solid waste officials do not see out-of-state trash as an immediate threat to the region. They also do not rule it out. "I stuck my foot in my mouth before when I said we probably wouldn't get Canadian trash," Patrick said, "and a few weeks later it was here." Lawmakers react The state's growing trash imports has drawn a strong reaction from both federal and state lawmakers - and a renewed push for either legislative or regulatory action. "I think it's disgusting that Canada is shipping trash to us," U.S. Sen. Carl Levin said during a recent visit to Traverse City. "The idea they can't find waste sites in Canada is atrocious." Levin said there are three avenues for federal authorities to deal with imported waste. One is tighter enforcement of a treaty between the two countries requiring "notice" of potentially hazardous materials crossing the border. Levin aide Kaye Meier said the Environmental Protection Agency traditionally has not enforced the treaty in regard to municipal waste, focusing instead on hazardous waste, but Levin and others have introduced a bill to require tighter enforcement of those rules. Another method involves homeland security: requiring more-extensive inspections of garbage trucks by the Bureau of Customs and Border Protection at international borders. Members of Michigan's Congressional delegation are pushing hard on the homeland security angle. A bipartisan group that includes Levin and Sen. Debbie Stabenow is pressing Customs to decide whether Canadian trash should continue to be classified as a "low-risk" commodity that can enter the United States with only a cursory inspection. Legislators so far have been unable to get a clear response from the border agency. Levin is scheduled to meet with customs agency Commissioner Robert Bonner next week in an attempt to resolve the inspections issue. "We should be inspecting every shipment coming into the country, from anywhere," Levin said. While neither measure would prohibit Canadian trash, Levin expects they would reduce the volume by holding up trash trucks for several hours for inspections. "If we can't stop them, at least we can slow them down," he said. The broadest approach would be legislative action to ban trash from Canada and potentially from other states. Levin says that could violate free trade agreements between the two countries. He also questions the level of legislative support for such efforts. "There's a lot of states that don't want to take sides in that debate," he said. "There's too many states exporting trash." At the state level, Michigan lawmakers also are hearing complaints about the state's growing trash imports. "It's an issue that's gained momentum," said state Sen. Patricia Birkholz, a Saugatuck Republican who is chairwoman of the Senate's Natural Resources and Environmental Affairs committee. The committee has conducted a series of public hearings in southern Michigan on Canadian trash imports, where she said officials are hearing a strong message from residents. "There are more and more people standing up and saying 'This is enough, we have to do something'," she said. James Clift of the Michigan Environmental Council says the federal government has "the clearest authority" to establish restrictions on the transport of trash. But he admits that sweeping federal legislation is not likely anytime soon, and believes state lawmakers will have to take the lead. "We believe the state can take significant actions to make Michigan less attractive to out-of-state waste," Clift said. One proposal is to enact a state tipping fee on all landfill trash dumped in Michigan, similar to what is happening in other Great Lakes states. Wisconsin increased its tipping fee from 30 cents to $3 per ton last year, and experienced a slight decrease in its trash imports from other states, according to the state's annual solid waste report. The tipping fee is opposed by the solid waste industry because it would impact both in-state and out-of-state trash and could increase the waste disposal costs for Michigan residents. "It's very short-sighted," said Matt Neely, area president for Republic Services, the country's third-largest solid waste industry, which operates a waste transfer station in Emmet County. Neely argues that a state tipping fee would be a "multiple tax" that would hit Michigan residents harder than it would out-of-state waste because it would impact their homes, business and even their municipalities that contract for trash service. "It's a tax that's really unfair to residents and business in Michigan because they're the ones that are going to be paying for it over and over," Neely said. Clift counters that a state tipping fee would deter out-of-state trash and provide money for the state to do better solid waste management. The revenue could bolster Michigan's weak recycling numbers by doing more public education on recycling and offering grants and other financial incentives for recycling initiatives by local communities. The council estimates that Michigan recycles only about 20 percent of its waste stream, compared with a 26 percent in regional Great Lakes states and a 30 percent national average. The status quo works against recycling, Clift says. With garbage rolling in from Canada and other states, people will see little benefit in taking the time and effort to reduce the amount of trash they throw away. "It undermines local efforts in regard to recycling and in efforts to reduce waste," he said. Birkholz said another tactic is for the state to prohibit trash imports from containing materials that Michigan residents do not throw away, including items such as returnable beverage containers, yard waste and batteries. Are more laws needed? People in the waste industry question the wisdom of more state regulations. They also note that waste importing and exporting is a two-way street. Michigan and Canada have exchanged waste for more than a decade. Canada receives low-level nuclear waste and hazardous waste products from Michigan, along with thousands of tons per year of recycled newsprint and cardboard. "If we didn't have access to the Ontario markets, the bottom would fall out of our recycling program for newsprint," said Horton of Waste Management. Horton said he believes state and federal governments should take a multi-state and even international approach to solid waste regulation, similar to the attempts to coordinate legislation involving the waters of the Great Lakes. Because the changing economics of the trash industry is creating larger wastersheds that cross state and even international borders, Horton says it only makes sense to look at regulations on a larger scale that are consistent across those boundaries. "There's a lot of political flavor to this issue right now, and (lawmakers) are playing it for all it's worth," Horton said. "But there should be a reason for all of these extraordinary steps to be taken."
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