House votes to bar international trash

[Ron Burgundy]

AP - After Michigan raised a stink about Canadian waste filling its landfills, the House approved a bill that would allow states to reject household trash from other countries.

The legislation, passed Tuesday and now moving to the Senate, would give states more say on the subject until the Environmental Protection Agency issues regulations on trash from Canada.

For more than a decade, Michigan residents have complained that trucks carrying Canadian trash clog their roads, cause environmental and health problems and create security risks because of the difficulty of screening trash for contraband.

"Not only is this waste an obnoxious substance, but it is a hazard to travelers," said the bill's author, Rep. John Dingell (news, bio, voting record), D-Mich., who chairs the Energy and Commerce Committee. It was approved by voice vote.

The bill could face hurdles. The Bush administration raised concerns in a letter to congressional leaders Monday, noting that more than 32 states shipped hazardous waste to Canada in 2004.

The bill "could provoke reciprocal actions by Canada or other trading partners against U.S. waste exports," Bush trade officials wrote.

Michigan receives nearly 4 million tons of Canadian trash annually — about 350 truckloads a day — while another 300,000 tons enter Washington state and New York a year.

Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm signed a measure last year to ban foreign trash, but the state needs congressional authority to enforce it.

"Without the ability to regulate this out-of-control surge in Canadian waste, Michigan communities can only sit back and watch the trash pile up," said Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich.

Jonathan Sauve, a spokesman for the Canadian Embassy, said officials were concerned that Michigan's implementation of the federal legislation would violate trade agreements because the state exports both hazardous and non-hazardous trash to Canada.

"We still believe that the issue can be managed without resorting to legislation," he said.

Rob Cook, president of the Ontario Waste Management Association, said the legislation, if signed into law, would cause serious problems for the Canadian province because of a shortage of landfill space.

Michigan's Democratic senators, Debbie Stabenow (news, bio, voting record) and Carl Levin (news, bio, voting record), have not signaled whether they will push the legislation. They brokered a deal with Ontario last year to phase out shipments of household trash from Toronto and other Ontario communities into Michigan by 2010, including a 20 percent decrease by the end of 2008.

The agreement does not cover industrial and commercial waste, which accounts for more than half of the Canadian trash entering Michigan.

Colleen Murray, a Stabenow spokeswoman, said Monday "the Canadians are already ahead of schedule in meeting the terms of the Stabenow-Levin agreement." Stabenow plans to "make sure the terms of the agreement continue to be met and to find a comprehensive solution to stop all the trash coming into Michigan," Murray said.

Ontario has pushed to expand its landfill capacity. The city of Toronto recently bought a landfill near St. Thomas, Ontario, to divert some of the Michigan-bound garbage, and Ontario officials approved plans in January to expand a landfill in the Township of Warwick to comply with the agreement.

___

The bill is H.R. 518

source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070424/ap_on_go_co/canadian_trash [link]