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Chairman Gillmor, members of
the Committee, my name is David Hess and I am the Secretary of Pennsylvania’s
Department of Environmental Protection.
I am here today on behalf of
Gov. Tom Ridge and members of the Pennsylvania General Assembly to give you one
simple message — Don’t dump on
Pennsylvania.
We need federal legislation now
giving communities the right to decide if they want to accept garbage from other
states for disposal.
The issue is simple—the U.S.
Supreme Court says communities don’t have the right to decide whether they
want out-of-state garbage or not. They
said only Congress can grant that right and that’s why we’re here.
We very much appreciate the
efforts of Chairman Gillmor and Ranking Member Mr. Pallone for scheduling this
hearing and that of Congressman Greenwood and Senators Specter and Santorum and
our entire Congressional Delegation for their continuing efforts to push for
federal legislation in this area.
Over the last six years Gov.
Ridge has personally visited many members of Congress, including members of this
Committee, to urge passage of interstate waste legislation.
And before him, the late Gov. Robert P. Casey carried the same message.
My predecessor James Seif
appeared before this very committee two years ago asking for your action and met
with many members to educate them on this issue.
In each of the last three
legislative sessions, members of our General Assembly have overwhelmingly passed
resolutions urging Congress to act on interstate waste legislation.
Today I’d like to recognize
the presence of Richard Fox representing Sen. Ray Musto, Democratic Chairman of
our Senate Environmental Resources and Energy Committee and Patrick Henderson,
representing Sen. Mary Jo White, the Majority Chairman of the Committee.
We Pennsylvanians are nothing
if not persistent, because we believe passing legislation giving states and
communities a voice on waste imports is the right thing to do.
Specifically, Pennsylvania is
seeking federal legislation on interstate waste that includes these basic
provisions:
- Giving communities the
ability to allow the disposal of imported waste through host community
agreements, which would address concerns like operating hours, truck
traffic, noise, and litter before permits are issued;
- Imposing a freeze on waste
imports immediately with a predictable schedule for reducing imports over
time;
- Allowing states to impose
a percentage cap on the amount of imported waste that a new facility could
receive;
- Allowing states to
consider in-state capacity as part of the permitting process;
- Allowing communities to
adopt waste flow control ordinances to protect existing bond debt.
Bills introduced by
Congressman Greenwood — H.R.1213 and Senator Specter
— S. 1194-- incorporate provisions that Pennsylvania supports.
These tools are needed
because some states have found it easier to dump on their neighbors than to
develop disposal facilities and recycling programs to handle the waste they
generate.
In many ways,
Pennsylvania has been a victim of our own success.
Pennsylvania has required
our counties to plan for how they will dispose of the waste they generate over
the next ten years, put in place the nation’s toughest environmental standards
for landfills and built the largest curbside recycling program in the country.
Because Pennsylvania has
successfully built a waste disposal and recycling system, other states feel they
can come in and take advantage of it, and there’s nothing to stop them.
Ironically, the lack of
federal legislation has also hampered other states, like New Jersey, who do want
to keep waste in their state, but can’t because they can’t control where
their waste goes for disposal.
Reasonable restrictions on
imported waste shipments like the ones we’re asking for will not ban all
imports as some have said. In fact, in 1999 Pennsylvania did a survey of
communities hosting landfills and found that 20% have, and would, agree to
accept waste imports for a variety of reasons.
The simple tools we are asking
for will enable states and communities to act responsibly to manage their own
waste and limit unwanted waste imports from other states.
The
need for federal legislation is now more urgent.
In March, Fresh Kills Landfill
serving New York City closed – forcing the city to find new disposal sites for
an additional 4.7 million tons of garbage a year. They are shipping 11,500 tons of trash a day outside the city
to landfills and incinerators in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Virginia.
Much of this garbage moves by
truck along our Interstate highways causing serious safety and environmental
problems for the states involved.
In May of this year,
Pennsylvania conducted “Operation Clean Sweep,” an unprecedented effort to
put State Police and environmental inspectors at each of the landfills and
resource recovery facilities in the Commonwealth over an eight-day period.
The results we found were, in a
word, frightening.
We inspected more than 40,000
trucks and cited waste haulers for over 11,000 safety and environmental
violations.
The Pennsylvania State Police
found 86 percent of the trucks they inspected had one or more safety violations
and they took 849 trucks or drivers out of service for being unsafe.
One driver showed up at 6:00
a.m. on a Monday morning drunk.
We’ve also had citizens
killed and seriously injured by trash trucks, most recently in Northumberland
County along I-78.
As the fines and penalties from
“Operation Clean Sweep” continue to pile up, we also continued our regular
truck inspections. As recently as
last week, six more inspection sites resulted in more violations.
The hazards of unsafe trash
trucks are real for our communities and we’re doing everything we can to
enforce our safety and environmental laws, but frankly we need to get to the
root of the problem that only federal legislation can solve.
We are also doing all we can
within the current law to improve our waste management programs.
Gov. Ridge issued an executive
order that directs DEP to actively involve communities early in landfill permit
decisions, and to take a detailed look at truck traffic and other community
impacts.
We
also passed new regulations requiring applicants for new landfill capacity to
prove the potential benefits of those facilities out weigh harms to the
environment and to the community.
Landfill applicants are also
prohibited from applying for new landfill capacity until they have five years or
fewer of capacity left.
Gov. Ridge is the first
governor to propose legislation that includes a two-year moratorium on issuing
permits for new or expanded landfills, new tools to crack down on unsafe trash
trucks and giving communities more say in resolving local issues with landfills
through host community agreements.
But Pennsylvania cannot address
the issue of waste imports without federal legislation.
In our offices, we have 25
applications for new or expanded landfills that will add 71.5 million more tons
and years of new waste disposal capacity in Pennsylvania.
If the additional capacity were
devoted only to the waste Pennsylvania generates, it would last us 7.24 years.
This is on top of the 12 years of capacity we have right now.
Our democracy is built on the
foundation of empowering people to make choices. It is also built on fairness.
Our communities now have no
voice in deciding whether millions of tons of garbage come to them for disposal
from other states.
In it is unfair that states
like Pennsylvania that have made the hard choices to build waste facilities and
recycling programs, have to make room for other states that have not.
We are not asking to build a
fence around our borders to turn back every waste truck or to turn our backs on
the legitimate needs of our neighbors.
We’re not asking for any
money.
We are asking Congress to give
states and communities a voice so we can limit unwanted garbage imports into our
state. With appropriate federal legislation, states will be provided the tools
needed to begin addressing the current inequities.
Again, thank you for an
opportunity to address this critical issue.
We look forward to working with
Congress to address this important issue and to developing a consensus that will
benefit all states and communities.
# # #
David
E. Hess was appointed Secretary of
Environmental Protection by Gov. Tom Ridge in March 2001.
He can be contacted at: 717
787-2814 or by e-mail: DavidHess@state.pa.us
. For more information on
Pennsylvania Waste Management Programs, visit DEP’s website at:
www.dep.state.pa.us
(directLINK “waste management”).
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