Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, July 23, 1994 TAG: 9407250050
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By CATHRYN McCUE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
By unanimous vote, a congressional subcommittee on Friday passed a bill giving local governments the final say on new private landfills and incinerators that would import solid waste from other states.
"This is very popular, and it solves a problem that has been resonating across the country," said Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Abingdon, chief proponent of the bill. He said the full House Energy and Commerce Committee, of which he is a senior member, likely would take up the issue within two weeks.
Boucher said the bill has broad-based support from various environmental groups, the National Association of Counties and 34 congressional co-sponsors. A similar measure will go to the Senate for debate sometime this summer.
Some in the waste-hauling and management industry oppose the measure, but Boucher said his bill would not affect existing private landfills and incinerators that take out-of-state trash. Such facilities, at the end of their contracts, would have to get community approval to continue operating, however.
The bill also would not prohibit all interstate transport of garbage. Companies can still build new landfills in communities that want the jobs and economic gain from the lucrative business of dumping America's trash - about 200 million tons a year that feeds a $30 billion industry.
"Entrepreneurs are making substantial profits by converting farms into private landfills,'' Boucher said.
"Appalachia, like other poor communities, has been targeted by industries for waste disposal," said David Rause, a philosophy professor at Clinch Valley College who has been tracking the issue for several years.
He lives just a couple of miles from the site in Wise County that two developers wanted to turn into a commercial landfill. The county stopped them, and they eventually bought an old dump in Alleghany County and turned it into one of the most notorious environmental disasters in the state - the Kim-Stan landfill.
For about two years, the unlined dump took in thousands of tons of trash from New York City and elsewhere, creating noise, dust and polluted runoff until the state shut it down in 1990.
That same year, Boucher introduced a bill that would allow localities to ban out-of-state waste. He agrees with Rause, in that rural counties often lack zoning laws and other land- use regulations that would ensure their residents a voice if a private landfill were proposed.
There are no commercially operated landfills or incinerators in Southwest Virginia.
A 1992 report by the National Solid Wastes Management Association tracking interstate movement of municipal garbage showed that Virginia exports up to 1 million tons annually to North Carolina, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Maryland and Illinois.
The report did not show how much is imported into Virginia, but showed that the waste comes in from Washington D.C., Maryland, New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania.
Boucher's bill, aside from granting localities the power to say "No," would give states the power to freeze the amount of out-of-state waste coming in at 1993 levels.
It also would give governors the authority to deny new landfills if the state determines there is no local or regional need for the jobs or for use of the landfill itself.
Previous attempts to grant localities such power have been stymied because trash is considered a commodity, protected under the Constitution's Commerce Clause.
That holds only in the absence of congressional action, Boucher said. The proposed change in federal law would stand any test of constitutionality, he said.
by CNB