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

TO ORDER:

• Please call (952) 831-2473 or fax your request to (952) 831-6550 or email: research@wasteinfo.com.