Managing Solid Waste
On July 1, 2015, several mandated deadlines will kick in for solid waste management in Vermont:
• Statewide unit based pricing takes effect, requiring residential trash charges to be based on volume or weight.
• Recyclable materials are banned from the landfill.
• Transfer stations and drop-off centers must accept leaf and yard debris.
• Haulers must offer residential recycling collection at no separate charge.
• Public buildings must provide recycling containers alongside all trash containers in public spaces except in rest rooms.
• Food scrap generators of 52 tons per year must divert material to any certified facility within 20 miles.
At last year’s VLCT Annual Meeting, the membership adopted this policy: 4.04 B. Ensure that the State of Vermont’s Rules, regulations, and guidelines are flexible enough to enable local governments to determine the most appropriate collection, storage, and treatment methods for sewage, solid waste, wastewater and recyclables.
In January, VLCT hosted a solid waste workshop that was attended by more than 100 solid waste district officials, state solid waste staff, local officials, and directors of alliances and independent towns. They were very concerned about how they would be able to meet the statutory deadlines. Out of that workshop came five recommendations for action:
1. Municipalities, alliances, groups, and districts should be able to offset costs of recycling and organics processing with assessments, sticker fees, property taxes, or any other funding mechanism that works in their circumstances.
2. The state requirement for individuals to separate food residuals by July 1, 2020, should be eliminated.
3. Municipalities, alliances, and districts should retain the discretion to determine the appropriate number of household hazardous waste collection days for their member towns. Each collection event is reported to cost from $5,000 to $8,000 in rural areas.
4. Municipalities and public places should be accorded flexibility to determine the appropriate number and placement of recycling bins relative to trash receptacles.
5. There should be flexibility in the deadline to separate leaf and yard waste from the waste stream that takes into consideration the proximity of processing facilities.
In 2014, the House Natural Resources and Energy Committee initiated a roundtable discussion that led to the creation of the Solid Waste Infrastructure Advisory Committee, which issued a report to the legislature in January. The House committee also held a hearing on solid waste at VLCT’s Local Government Day in the Legislature last February during which many local officials testified about the difficulties they were facing with figuring out how to comply with the July 1deadlines. They said that while they believe in the goals of Act 148, they need flexibility in terms of how to achieve them, which the act does not provide.
There are presently nine bills in the legislature that address various aspects of the solid waste law. What VLCT Weekly Legislative Report No. 16 ♦ April 29, 2015 Page 6
has the legislature done to address the need for flexibility particularly in small rural parts of the state? Nothing. And time is running out for the current session. At this point, any action would need to be initiated from the Senate. Contact your senators immediately if the solid waste deadlines in Act 148 will present a problem for your community.
