Recycling, water quality and land development permitting are among lawmakers’ top environmental priorities this session, according to Sen. Bob Hartwell, D-Bennington.
When lawmakers reconvene Tuesday, they will begin to tackle the implementation of the state’s universal recycling program.
Hartwell, chair of the Natural Resources and Energy Committee, is sponsoring S.208, which would roll back the bottle bill, increase data collection for solid waste operations and set up an account to fund new solid waste district infrastructure for soon-to-be-mandated organic waste recycling.
The Agency of Natural Resources released a 140-page report this fall detailing the implementation of Vermont’s Universal Recycling Law, established last year under Act 148 to expand statewide recycling, redemption and composting. The report will be the springboard for lawmakers as they discuss sweeping changes to the state’s recycling program slated to roll out in July.
The state’s land use bill, Act 250, will also be tweaked in Hartwell’s committee, and Sen. Diane Snelling is sponsoring a proposal that would make shoreline development subject to Act 250 permitting.
BOTTLE BILL ON NOTICE
S.208 strikes liquor containers from the bottle bill entirely. Only carbonated drinks and liquor are redeemable under present law, which was originally passed in 1972 to address litter problems.
The bottle bill – which allows consumers to redeem a 5-cent deposit on carbonated drinks and a 15-cent deposit on liquor containers – is facing stiff opposition from beverage distributors stirred by the cost of redemption center handling fees and competition from single-stream recycling technology.
“I think we need to face up to the fact that everything is going to go through the single-stream systems,” Hartwell said. “At some point, the bottle bill will be eliminated.”
He said the Department of Liquor Control is spending about $190,000 annually to pick up deposited liquor bottles from redemption centers. He said there is a market for multicolored crushed glass coming out of recycling facilities, such as for asphalt paving mixes.
Some beverage distributors say the program is an unnecessary expense . The bottle bill requires distributors to pay a 3.5 cent to 4 cent per bottle handling fee.
Andrew MacLean, a founding partner at the Montpelier’s lobbying firm MacLean Meehan & Rice, said Vermont has the highest handling fees in the county.
The firm represents the Beverage Association of Vermont.
“That handling fee is what makes the bottle bill extremely expensive,” MacLean said. “This is financially killing us.”
MacLean said expansion of the law to include other containers, such as bottled water, would increase the burden on distributors while marginally increasing the state’s diversion rate – the percentage of recycled material not going into a landfill.
“You’re talking about a system that would greatly increase the cost of recycling material,” MacLean said. “And for what benefit?”
The agency’s report says an expanded bottle bill would increase the diversion rate by 1 percent above the baseline.
He said by sending these bottles to a materials recycling facility directly – which would mean consumers would place the bottles in their curbside recycling bins, for example – would give recyclers a valuable commodity to sell and help them invest in infrastructure.
Environmental groups say the bottle bill increases the diversion rate for recyclables and prevents materials, such as glass, from losing their reuse value.
Lauren Hierl, an environmental health advocate for Vermont Public Interest Research Group (VPIRG), said the proposed liquor redemption repeal is a step back.
“It’s completely the wrong direction to be going,” Hierl said. “It’s distracting from what we should be doing.”
She said liquor containers are largely composed of glass, which loses its value when it passes through traditional recycling facilities. This was a center-stage argument when the environmental advocacy group invited lawmakers to tour the TOMRA recycling facility in Essex Junction last month.
SOLID WASTE DISTRICTS
Hartwell wants to establish a fund to offset the cost for commercial haulers to modify their vehicles to transport newly mandated recyclables and upgrade facilities that must offer recycling and composting at no additional cost to residents under Act 148.
The Solid Waste Infrastructure Assistance Fund, as described in S.208, would provide financial assistance to waste districts soon to be required to collect recyclables and compost material. The fund would be supported with an additional $1 franchise tax charge on each ton of waste delivered to the facility.
The franchise tax is a fee on the disposal of waste, which is currently set at $6 per ton.
By July 1, food processors with more than 104 tons of food waste per year will be required to compost their food residuals if a facility is located within a 20-mile radius of processors. This is the first phase of a statewide mandate to compost all organic waste by 2020. According to a May 2013 study by the Department of Environmental Conservation, organics account for about 28 percent of residential waste by weight, outranking all other materials.
WATER QUALITY
Sen. Diane Snelling, R-Chittenden, is pushing for a comprehensive policy to restore the state’s water quality.
“My goal is to have a conversation about overall water quality and to take into account all of the issues we currently know are problems,” said Snelling, who is vice chair of the Natural Resources and Energy Committee.
The main obstacle to improving the state’s water quality is that lawmakers do not have clear priorities and funding mechanisms, Snelling said. S.215 requires the Agency of Natural Resources to provide the Legislature with a detailed list of strategic investment priorities to clean up the state’s lakes, ponds, rivers and streams.
Early last year, the Department of Environmental Conservation prepared a report on the state’s water quality, as required by Act 138, citing federal directives to study and restore the water quality in Lake Champlain, Lake Memphremagog, the Connecticut River and 18 stormwater-runoff impaired streams across the state.
The total price tag was estimated at $156 million. The report details more than 20 ways to finance the improvements, ranging from a municipal property tax to the lottery.
Later, the department and the Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets released a draft plan for restoring the Lake Champlain Basin. The Environmental Protection Agency has ordered the state to revise its TMDL (total maximum daily load), which sets targets for phosphorus loading into Lake Champlain, or face federal funding cuts and significantly tightened regulations for facilities around the lake.
The plan, which was aired at several public meetings last summer, includes tightening the state’s agriculture programs, stormwater management practices, ensuring river channel stability, updating forest management practices and watershed protection plans. These are considered “nonpoint sources,” unlike the closely regulated facility discharges around the lake, that dump phosphorous into the lake.
The EPA is requiring that Vermont reduce Lake Champlain’s phosphorus load by 36 percent – from 533 metric tons to 343 metric tons of loading per year.
Snelling, who is also a member of the Lake Shoreland Protection Commission, is also sponsoring a bill that would require an Act 250 permit for shoreline development within 250 feet of eligible water bodies.
“That zone requires certain practices, it doesn’t mean you cannot build there,” she said, responding to the concerns of property owners alarmed by the proposal.
Development within the protected zone must maintain an acceptable vegetative buffer in order to mitigate water runoff and protect water quality and aquatic habitat.
Last year, the Legislature passed last-minute legislation to set up Lake Shoreland Protection Commission to hear public feedback throughout the summer. There will be a public hearing in Montpelier on Wednesday to discuss the issue and hear testimony from the public.
ACT 250
Hartwell said the Senate will discuss an update to the state’s development permitting process, Act 250.
S.207, a two-page bill sponsored by Hartwell, would change the permit’s traffic criterion to encourage alternative means of travel, such as by bicycle or by foot.
“That’s a change that has been evolving and we are going to press that hard,” Hartwell said.
The permit would require that development does not interfere with sidewalks, paths, trails and bikeways while reducing the necessary travel by vehicle. The permit’s current language only includes highways, waterways, airways and “other means of transportation.”
Increasing pedestrian and bicycle traffic has been a focus of the administration this year.
Gov. Peter Shumlin announced an infrastructure improvement plan designed to improve pedestrian and automobile traffic flow across Chittenden County this fall. The plan is billed as an alternative to the four-lane Circumferential Highway, a project effectively killed by the governor in 2011. The so-called Circ Alternative is a three-phase plan to make 34 infrastructure investments in Williston, Essex and Colchester.
