SPECIAL REPORT: Interstate Waste
Ten Years After Supreme Court Rulings, Interstate Waste Issue Still Unresolved

ISSUE: Volume 12, Number 2 February 2002

ABSTRACT:

For as long as the United States has existed, its citizens have fought battles, both legislative and armed, over the right to preserve their individual state sovereignty. The waste industry has seen more than its share of territorial disputes. The inherent psychological handicap of waste—the perception that accepting it somehow places a state in a subservient position to its brethren—only adds gasoline to the fire.

So every few years, one state or another decides it’s had enough of others’ wastes, steps up, and creates some sort of law designed to keep out other states’ trash. And every time, said law soon gets struck down by the courts, all of which follow the Supreme Court’s 1977 dictum on the issue: like it or not, trash is commerce, and thus protected.

That hasn’t stopped states across the Union from trying, though. This month in SWD, we’ll take a look at the current interstate waste hotspot, and provide some perspective in the form of legal background and Congressional prospects.

SECTIONS:
-The National Interstate Waste Debate
-The Battle in the Courts: The Commerce Clause
-Other Interstate Waste Initiatives by the States
-Congressional Prospects
-Flow Control in the Courts
-Intrastate-Only Flow Control
-A Growing Trend in Interstate Waste Shipments
-The Largest Exporting States
-The Largest Importing States
-The Future
-Methodology
-References

Mississippi Authority Loses Landfill Flow Control Suit
The Pine Belt Regional Solid Waste Authority has lost its legal battle for exclusive rights to bury garbage collected in the Pine Belt...

Pennsylvania Charges Haulers With Medical Waste Violations
Pennsylvania's Environmental Crimes Section has charged Waste Management of New York and Kephart Trucking of Bigler, Clearfield County, with alleged violations of the state's environmental crimes laws for illegally transporting infectious medical waste from a Brooklyn, New York, transfer station on Interstate 80 in Columbia County...

Court Rules Against Nebraska In Low-Level Landfill Lawsuit
U.S. District Court Judge Richard G. Kopf has entered judgment in favor of the Central Interstate Low-Level Radioactive Waste Commission against the state of Nebraska for $151,408,240, plus post-judgment interest in a lawsuit involving American Ecology subsidiary US Ecology, Inc. and three electric utility companies...

Pennsylvania County May Be Sued Over Biosolids, Court Holds
A Center County, Pa. township can be sued for damages over an ordinance that restricts the use of biosolids to reclaim mine sites, a federal judge has ruled...

Senate Considers Interstate Waste Hauling Restrictions
The Senate Environmental and Public Works Committee has begun discussing whether Congress needs to intervene to curb increases in garbage being shipped across state lines...

Geologists Dispute Findings On Nuclear Waste Landfill
A proposed nuclear waste repository expansion near Andrews has become the focus of dueling geologists and scientific reports...

Bloomberg Releases Plans For Commercial Waste Movement
Mayor Michael Bloomberg has begun releasing details of a comprehensive plan to handle the city's commercial and residential waste now that the Fresh Kills Landfill on Staten Island has shut down...

What the Numbers Mean
Background Landfill capacity is loathed by environmentalists and coveted by waste management firms...

SWD's Capacity Report 2005: Stable Outlook For A Shifting Market
As any investor or sports fan knows, betting on the future is a risky business...

Sedgwick County, Wichita Look To Work Together On Landfill
Sedgwick County is seeking to work more closely with the city of Wichita in order to develop a landfill, and is thus withdrawing its bid to develop city-owned land near Furley into a disposal facility...