State regulators confirmed Tuesday that there had been a wastewater leak at the Keystone Sanitary Landfill just as U.S. Sen. Robert P. Casey introduced a bill that would enable states to better control the flow of garbage across their borders.
According to the Department of Environmental Protection, Keystone reported the leak after a powerful February storm damaged a “conveyance line” that carries wastewater to a lagoon, part of the dump’s treatment system. The incident was one in a series involving wastewater at Keystone that the DEP has investigated over the last year.
Casey’s bill, the Trash Reduction and Sensible Handling Act, would not have prevented the wastewater spill. It would, however, give Pennsylvania and every other state far greater power to regulate landfills’ importation of garbage from other states.
States have very little recourse now because such shipments are part of interstate commerce, regulation of which is assigned to the Congress by the U.S. Constitution. Congress can mandate greater state control as part of that constitutional authority.
The TRASH Act would require all the state governments to set higher standards for waste imports. It would require any exporting jurisdiction to meet standards for waste handling, recycling and transportation equal to those of the importing state. That higher bar would better ensure the safety of waste imports, but also create an incentive for exporting states to dispose of their own waste.
Likewise, the TRASH Act would enable the importing state to impose a higher fee on imported waste than on waste generated in-state, which would go to communities affected by the dump importing the garbage.
Such a law likely would diminish garbage imports, which is crucially important as the massive Keystone dump presses its plan to expand and accept more than 100 million tons of mostly imported trash over the next 40 years.
To read the full story, visit http://thetimes-tribune.com/opinion/nepa-needs-trash-act-1.2173975.