Mandatory trash pickup loses favor as state's answer to illegal dumping
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An illegal dump near the town of Nicholson in Fayette County, an area that was cleaned up over several months in 2008-09.
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HARRISBURG -- There are more than 5,700 illegal dump sites in Pennsylvania, marring countrysides and forests with discarded bags of household garbage, debris from old buildings, used tires, big rusty barrels, wornout sofas and appliances.
About 17,000 tons of unsightly trash is disposed of this way, "which I think most Pennsylvanians would find rather shocking," said Scott Wagner, president of a York waste disposal firm. "Illegal dumping is a real and damaging problem in rural Pennsylvania."
It can also be a problem for inner-city areas, where vacant lots are often full of illegally dumped garbage, said state Sen. David Argall, R-Schuylkill, former chairman of a legislative environmental committee that is looking for solutions.
"I thought it was more of a rural problem, but it turns out to be an equal headache for cities," Mr. Argall said in an interview last week.
One controversial solution is for the Legislature to mandate that all 3,200 of the commonwealth's cities, townships and boroughs hire haulers to collect trash and recyclables, paid for by the town and its taxpayers.
But after several months of debate, that costly idea has fallen out of favor with an 18-member House-Senate advisory panel called the Joint Legislative Air and Water Pollution Control and Conservation Committee.
Mr. Argall, still a member, said that while Pennsylvanians hate ugly dump sites, they also hate having more "unfunded mandates" imposed by the state Legislature.
Mandatory pickup "would be a 'big-government' solution to the illegal dump problem, and big-government solutions are extremely unpopular these days," said Mr. Argall. "Even the strongest advocates of steps to fight illegal dumping say that mandatory trash collection doesn't solve the problem. We've got to get more creative to solve this problem."
First Published September 25, 2011 12:00 am
