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January 9, 2007
Time runs out on empty bottle bill
Mannix Porterfield
Register-Herald Reporter
CHARLESTON — You might say the empty container bill was bottled up Monday by
the clock.
Put simply, it means Judiciary Subcommittee B ran out of time before it could
look at a revised version of a proposal to slap a 10-cent deposit fee on all
beverage containers.
The idea is to affix such a fee to prod consumers to turn them in for a refund,
and, in the process, discourage the wanton discarding of them along roadsides as
an anti-litter measure.
“The committee on other issues took up so much time, we didn’t have time to get
to the bottle issue,” Sen. Jon Blair Hunter, D-Monongalia, a co-chair, explained
afterward.
Instead, the panel focused on coal mining issues, including a call for an
in-depth study of the coalbed methane industry, and a resolution seeking more
research on coal sludge issues.
Hunter reserved an opinion on the so-called bottle bill, saying he hasn’t seen
the newest version drafted by committee counsel.
“That was the other problem,” he said.
Hunter noted that one panelist, Delegate Kelli Sobonya, R-Cabell, was critical
of being asked to vote on a slurry pipeline bonding bill without getting a
chance to see it before the meeting. That measure was tabled on the advice of
outgoing House Judiciary Chairman Jon Amores, D-Kanawha.
“I thought it probably appropriate we didn’t act on it without the time now,”
the co-chairman said of the bottle measure.
“We wouldn’t have had time to really study the bill.”
Hunter said he understands that forces supporting the deposit bill have lined up
sponsors to have it introduced once the 2007 session opens Wednesday.
The measure already has stirred both sides.
In opposition, the West Virginia Oil Marketers and Grocers Association (OMEGA)
sees it as a feeble attempt to control littler, saying it targets only 8.5
percent of roadside refuse and 4 percent of municipal solid waste.
What’s more, the group contends, it would lead to cheats buying bottled drinks
outside West Virginia, then collecting a deposit that hadn’t been paid.
But Linda Frame, a program manager for West Virginia Citizen Action Group, said
the program has been effective in 11 states that has enacted such legislation,
and other states are about to follow their example.
Surveys elsewhere have pointed to an 80 percent reduction rate in litter, she
said.
As for the element of dishonesty, she said technology is available to code
containers so the West Virginia origin of sale is indisputable.
— E-mail:
mannix@register-herald.com
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