Who is a member?
Our members are the local governments of Massachusetts and their elected and appointed leadership.
The Honorable Paul A. Schmid III, House Chair
The Honorable Anne M. Gobi, Senate Chair
Joint Committee on Environment, Natural Resources & Agriculture
State House,
Boston
Dear Representative Schmid, Senator Gobi, and Members of the Committee,
On behalf of the cities and towns of the Commonwealth, the Massachusetts Municipal Association appreciates the opportunity to offer comments regarding several bills before you for public hearing today. We support the following measures: S. 408, An Act Establishing the Massachusetts Paint Stewardship Program; S. 410, Resolve Relative to Establishing a Comprehensive Waste Management Hierarchy in Massachusetts; and S. 401, Resolve Providing for an Investigation and Study of Enhancing Statewide Recycling Programs. We oppose the following bills: H. 676, An Act to Regulate the Incineration of Solid Waste; S. 703, An Act to Prohibit the Additional Incineration of Solid Waste; S. 399, An Act to Reduce Solid Waste in the Commonwealth; H. 647, An Act to Increase Access to Recycling; and H. 671/S. 454, An Act Relative to Recycling.
Municipalities are on the front line of environmental protection and stewardship, and municipal leaders take this responsibility seriously. Local officials volunteer to serve on conservation commissions, boards of health, drinking water boards and sewer boards. Cities and towns across the Commonwealth have made enormous progress reducing solid waste and increasing recycling programs throughout the state. Most communities have built recycling and reuse facilities and many now include composting. Communities have also implemented automated curbside pickup and instituted unit-based pricing for waste collection, commonly known as “pay-as-you-throw,” to incentivize recycling. In fact, 90 percent of Massachusetts’s municipalities now provide comprehensive recycling programs for their residents.
In the past, state government has partnered with communities to promote recycling programs. In 1995, more than 30 percent of unclaimed bottle deposits were used to fund recycling grants to cities and towns through the Department of Environmental Protection and the Clean Environment Fund. Since 2003, none (0 percent) of the unclaimed deposits (which totaled $33 million last year) has been allocated to municipal recycling programs. Today, local officials are operating their recycling initiatives and solid waste management programs with less assistance from state government, which is why cities and towns are voicing their opposition to new solid waste management mandates. Unfunded mandates place an onerous burden on local taxpayers, and force communities to cut essential services in other areas of the budget, including education, public safety, public works and much more.
For decades, municipalities have shouldered the financial burden of providing recycling programs for our residents, while businesses and trash haulers have provided limited recycling. More than half of the trash produced in Massachusetts comes from businesses and commercial interests. Today, we ask you and your colleagues on the Joint Committee on Environment, Natural Resources & Agriculture to avoid new mandates on cities and towns, and instead focus your attention on businesses, private trash haulers and manufacturers of difficult-to-manage waste items such as paint and electronics.
Please support the following bills: S. 408, An Act Establishing the Massachusetts Paint Stewardship Program; S. 410, Resolve Relative to Establishing a Comprehensive Waste Management Hierarchy in Massachusetts; and S. 401, Resolve Providing for an Investigation and Study of Enhancing Statewide Recycling Programs.
We ask you to support S. 408, An Act Establishing the Massachusetts Paint Stewardship Program. This measure would establish a convenient statewide paint collection and recycling program for all Massachusetts residents and businesses, to be operated and financed by the paint industry. This legislation would help cities and towns save money while greatly expanding the safe management of leftover paint for our residents.
We ask you to support S. 410, a Resolve Relative to Establishing a Comprehensive Waste Management Hierarchy in Massachusetts and S. 401, a Resolve Providing for an Investigation and Study of Enhancing Statewide Recycling Programs. These measures would examine and prioritize reduction and reuse of solid waste. We ask the Committee to amend the language to include commercial solid waste in the legislation. Landfill space is running out, making it urgently important for the Commonwealth to partner with communities to develop a full waste management plan. This plan must include managing all waste streams, not just municipal/residential, to reduce, reuse, recycle and recover energy. We also believe that any study must include financial support to municipalities for recycling and reuse efforts, the promotion of the diversion of organic and food wastes for anaerobic digestion and composting projects, the development of alternative technologies like gasification or pyrolysis (a process for converting solid waste to energy or fuel) and increasing the recycling rate of the commercial and private haulers.
Please oppose the following bills: H. 676, An Act to Regulate the Incineration of Solid Waste; S. 703, An Act to Prohibit the Additional incineration of Solid Waste; S. 399 An Act to Reduce Solid Waste in the Commonwealth; H. 647, An Act to Increase Access to Recycling, and H. 671/S. 454, An Act Relative to Recycling.
These bills would reduce municipal flexibility in dealing with solid waste and impose sweeping and costly unfunded mandates on cities and towns. The state should not be considering proposals to burden municipalities with unfunded mandates. Communities already provide comprehensive recycling services to almost all their residents. Instead, the state should examine ways to increase recycling efforts by private-sector parties who are responsible for the generation of most of the solid waste in the Commonwealth. Municipalities control only about 35 percent of all the disposed tonnage in the state, mainly residential. Based on a 2011 analysis by the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection, approximately two-thirds of the estimated 5 million tons of trash generated in the state is generated by businesses and collected by the private sector.
Unfunded mandates are not the only way to burden cities and towns. H. 676 and S. 703 would narrow solid waste management options by prohibiting the use of new technologies such as gasification in Massachusetts. We oppose such prohibitions. Communities need the ability to innovate and pilot new technologies, ranging from anaerobic digestion to gasification technology. The Commonwealth’s cities and towns are leading the way in recycling and hazardous waste reduction. Now is not the time to block new technologies.
With an increasingly complex waste stream, we request that the Legislature allow communities to innovate, and shift its focus to those who are responsible for generating and handling the majority of the Commonwealth’s trash, namely commercial generators and private haulers. We are proud of the fact that cities and towns provide recycling services to 90 percent of their residents. But please do not impose sweeping and unaffordable new responsibilities on cities, towns and local taxpayers to manage all consumer product waste.
Communities already do much more than state government or any private industry waste generator to implement recycling and innovative programs to reduce the waste stream. We ask that any new legislation be focused on restoring financial support to assist the good work that is accomplished locally, and we ask that you avoid harming local taxpayers with unaffordable unfunded mandates.
Thank you for your consideration. If you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to have your office contact me or Tom Philbin of the MMA at (617) 426-7272 at any time.
Sincerely,
Geoffrey C. Beckwith
Executive Director & CEO, MMA