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Our
Trash Stinks,
Too
Virginians
hate other peoples’ garbage,
but we ship
hazardous and nuclear waste to other states. Let's stop
tampering with interstate commerce.
My
neighbor’s trash smells. And it’s ugly. But you won’t hear me proclaim that my
household garbage isn’t like his, that my
garbage is nicer, cleaner, more sweet-smelling,
and deserves to be treated differently. Garbage is
garbage. We all create it directly when we empty
waste from our houses, and indirectly when we
consume products that generate waste when
manufactured.
Rationality
goes
right into the dumpster when Virginians talk about
interstate waste – especially when we refer to
garbage that comes from other states into our
state. The very thought of importing waste makes
for pungent political rhetoric: The Old Dominion shouldn’t become a dumping
ground for other peoples’ trash!
Elected
officials and environmental leaders get a lot of
mileage complaining about New York waste, and
politicians sponsor a lot of bad legislation
designed to curtail the movement of waste across
state lines. My advice: Put a lid on it. The U.S.
Constitution forbids states from halting the
interstate transportation of waste. Only Congress
can regulate commerce among the states. In doing
so, the commerce clause saves us from ourselves:
If Virginians could block imports of trash into
other states, what would prevent other states from
banning the hazardous and nuclear wastes we ship
them?
According
to the Virginia Department of Environmental
Quality’s 2001 solid waste report, 4.8 million
of the 23.7 million tons of solid waste managed at
Virginia’s
solid waste facilities – about 20 percent –
originated outside the state. Of that amount,
mostly municipal solid waste, 93 percent came from
the District
of Columbia,
Maryland,
New
York,
and North
Carolina.
The rest came from 20 other states and Canada
.
Virginians
should face the realities of the marketplace:
Landfill space is a commodity.
It’s not as attractive as ham, coal,
peanuts, or wine, but it is a Virginia
product. And there is a market for that product. Virginia’s
landfills are attractive to out-of-state
localities because they offer the shipper
confidence that wastes will be disposed of
properly. Constructed in accordance with the
latest environmental standards, the new “mega
landfills” are owned by companies with the
financial wherewithal to maintain compliance and
to give money back to the communities in which
they do business.
Not
long ago, virtually every county, city, and town
in the Commonwealth had its own dump. These sites
were built in accordance with the technology of
the times, which meant they were poorly located,
poorly built, poorly run, and improperly closed.
Legacy sites loaded with home-grown Virginia
trash dot the landscape and pose a far greater
threat than modern facilities, regardless of the
source of the waste.
Virginians
would do well to remember that we don’t live in
a cocoon. Despite the presence of two nuclear
power plants within our borders, Virginia
has no facility for the permanent management of
spent nuclear fuel, also called high-level nuclear
waste. Only one member of Virginia’s
Congressional delegation voted against the federal
government’s plan to ship spent fuel to the Yucca
Mountain
site in Nevada.
I doubt many Virginians wrote President Bush
encouraging him to veto Yucca
Mountain
.
Also,
Virginia’s
nuclear power plants, along with hospitals and
research facilities, generate low-level nuclear
wastes. Virginia
has no low-level nuclear waste facility. We have
disposed of this material in
South
Carolina
for decades. Talk about an intellectual
contortion: Earlier this year, Virginia
joined Tennessee,
Florida,
Alabama,
and the Southeast Low-Level Radioactive Waste
Compact in a lawsuit seeking $90 million from North
Carolina
because the Tarheel state has refused to develop a
waste facility to replace the South
Carolina
site.
And
that’s not the end of it. According to the
Environmental Protection Agency’s 1999
Virginia
data, the Old Dominion also generates more than 121,000
tons of hazardous waste annually. Hazardous waste
doesn't just come from heavy manufacturing plants
-- it comes from high-tech companies, small
businesses, even office buildings.
Virginia
facilities handle some hazardous waste, along with
that from other states, but much gets shipped to
other states. There are varied types of
hazardous waste, each requiring different
technologies to dispose of. It makes no sense to
build specialized facilities in each state. The
marketplace determines the most cost-effective and
environmentally appropriate method of treatment or
disposal.
Virginians
also need to acknowledge the hard truth that
federal courts will likely hold efforts by Virginia
government to restrict out-of-state waste to be in
violation of the Constitution’s commerce clause.
Clever efforts by other states to tiptoe around
the U.S. Supreme Court’s prior decisions in this
area— with the best of arguments about states’
rights and protection of the health and safety of
individual state’s citizens— have been
repeatedly and almost summarily struck down by the
federal courts.
If anything, over time, the Court has grown
more adamant in its view that waste, as an article
of interstate commerce, cannot be regulated by
individual states. The Congress that toils over
legislation for which there is national consensus
is unlikely to tackle an issue that impacts only a
handful of states.
Virginians
have spent and, unless the zeal can be stanched,
will continue to spend too much money defending
state legislation that will not withstand court
challenge. In
1999, the General Assembly passed and the Governor
signed legislation that placed a cap on waste
tonnage that could be accepted in Virginia
landfills and restricted the use of river barges
to transport solid waste. In February 2000, a
federal court struck down the statutes for
violating the commerce clause. Statements by
elected officials were used as evidence of the
true intent of the laws—to stop out-of-state
waste.
Papers
for the federal district court case identify eight
law firms plus the Attorney General’s Office,
naming 21 individual lawyers. The state spent tax
dollars on the lawyers defending the legislation.
Lawyers for the prevailing plaintiffs most
assuredly will ask the court to require Virginia
to pay their fees also. Furthermore, DEQ allocated
resources to gather data in defense of the laws,
not to mention witness preparation for potential
testimony. This money and human resources would
been more usefully spent devising a regulatory
program that assures that all waste, whether
generated in or out of state, is properly managed
and that the regulations
are enforced.
I
can’t see that
Virginia’s status as a large waste importer has had any
detrimental effect on tourism, business
development – the existence of waste disposal
options actually is a net positive for industry
– or even on the environment. Anti-trash
crusades may appeal to voters, but they don’t
help taxpayers. We might as well take the money we
pay to the lawyers and bury it
in one of those
landfills.
--
August 5, 2002
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