LANSING – Responding to a report released today showing Canadian and out-of-state garbage increased to 6.3 million tons in 2006, State Representatives Terry Brown (D-Pigeon) and John Espinoza (D-Croswell) threw their support behind a plan to attack the economics of the ever-growing trash trade by raising the paltry charge that trash companies pay to dump in Michigan.
"More and more trash keeps flooding into Michigan because we're the cheapest dumping ground around," Brown said. "We must attack the economics of the trash trade if we're going to protect our land, our water, our communities and our quality of life today and for generations to come. We need to make Michigan a magnet for jobs, not Canadian and out-of-state trash."
Michigan's Department of Environmental Quality today said Canada and other states dumped
6.3 million tons of
trash in our state in 2006, up from 6.2 million tons in 2005. Canadian and out-of-state trash now accounts for more than
30 percent of total waste landfilled in Michigan. In 1996, Canada and other states dumped only 1.9 million tons of
trash, about 13 percent of trash landfilled in Michigan.
The anti-trash plan will:
- Raise Michigan's dumping charge from 21cents a ton – the lowest in the region – to $7.50 a ton, the highest in the nation.
- Ban new landfills and strictly limit the expansion of existing landfills until 2012.
- Return money from the new dumping charge – expected to total $170 million in the first year – to local communities to pay for roads, fire and police, and more recycling.
- Crack down on jurisdictions that send prohibited waste to Michigan, and make it easier to prosecute and punish repeat offenders with up to $10,000 in fines.
"Michigan is a beautiful place to hunt, fish and enjoy the outdoors – we must protect it from becoming a dumping ground," said Espinoza, whose district contains the Blue Water Bridge, a main entry-point for trash from Canada. "Increasing the dumping charge worked in Pennsylvania, and it will work here. We must fight to keep the Great Lakes State from turning into the Great Waste State."
For more than four years, lawmakers in the House have led the fight against Canadian and out-of-state trash and said a high dumping charge is the best weapon against imported garbage. The nation's largest importer of trash, Pennsylvania, slashed garbage imports after it raised its dumping charge to $7.25 a ton in 2002. In 2001, Pennsylvania took in 12.6 million tons of imported trash; in 2005, that amount plunged to 9.6 million tons.