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This editorial from WI has a familiar idea that's being
debated in MI.
Wisconsin: Dumping Ground
for the Upper Midwest.
It’s a slogan that won’t attract tourists or please environmentalists, but it
has had proven appeal to garbage haulers from neighboring states.
The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources recently reported that the
amount of garbage dumped here from Illinois, Iowa, Michigan and Minnesota nearly
doubled last year from 2003, to almost 2.2 million tons.
Where is most of it originating? In Illinois, which sent more than 1.4
million tons to Wisconsin in 2004 alone, most of it to a landfill in Kenosha
County.
It already was obvious four years ago that the state’s solid-waste policies
and laws were not working as their authors intended. While Wisconsinites were
being encouraged to recycle, the state was becoming one of the biggest garbage
importers in the country. At the time, almost two tons of out-of-state garbage
were going into Wisconsin landfills for every ton of household materials that
Wisconsin residents and businesses recycled.
To discourage neighboring states from hauling their garbage here, the
Legislature in 2002 raised the waste-dumping fee in Wisconsin to $3 per ton from
30 cents. For a couple of years, it seemed to be working. A slight decrease in
out-of-state waste occurred in 2002, followed by a small increase in 2003.
But now it is rapidly growing. To address the escalating
out-of-state trash, Rep. Spencer Black, D-Madison, wants the Legislature to pass
a bill raising the dumping fee to $10 a ton from $3. And he wants the state to
distribute the increased revenue to communities to help pay the cost of
recycling, about 70 percent of which is now paid with local fees or property
taxes. He estimates that the bill would result in about $70 million a year in
income to the state and a reduction in out-of-state waste entering Wisconsin
landfills.
“Encouraging other states to annually dump millions of tons of garbage in
Wisconsin is bad policy,” Black said in announcing plans to introduce his
legislation. “This bill will help both our environment and our property
taxpayers.”
It’s a proposal the Legislature should pursue if it’s serious about
controlling taxes and reducing the volume of out-of-state garbage coming into
the state. |