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January 19, 2007
Bottle bill sponsor remains hopeful
By Mannix Porterfield
REGISTER-HERALD REPORTER
CHARLESTON — A renewed effort to stick a 10-cent deposit on all beverage
containers as a means of diminishing littering along West Virginia’s highways
should be in printed form next week.
Its intent is to allow consumers to redeem the full deposit, hopefully to
discourage litterbugs from tossing cans and bottles out of vehicle windows.
“It’s a process where the retailers are not responsible for the collection,” the
lead sponsor, Sen. Brooks McCabe, D-Kanawha, said Friday.
“We tried to make it as user-friendly as possible and provide a financial
incentive for the collection centers. We hope the county solid waste
organizations will take a look at this. We’ve got to work it through the
process. We want to sit down with retailers and try to deal with any of the
rough edges.”
Already, the proposal has come under fire within the business community.
Kevin Dietly of Northbridge, an environmental consulting firm in Westford,
Maine, says the program could wind up in the red if too many people begin
turning in cans and bottles, since the measure provides a full return of the
deposit and 3 cents on each container is dedicated to recycling centers.
If more than 77 percent of the containers are returned, Dietly maintains, the
fund goes broke.
McCabe agreed the point is a valid one, but said adjustments can be made.
“We’re looking at trying to have a control feature in there that would allow the
Department of Environmental Protection to make some adjustments if we would get
close to that being a problem,” the senator said.
“If there was so much usage, they (centers) would get less per container but
would be getting more dollars because of the increased volume.”
McCabe said he was confident the matter could be dealt with if it surfaced.
“We don’t see that as a problem in the near term at all,” he said.
“I think the bigger problem is getting the retailers comfortable with it.”
- - -
The Senate read for the first time several bills originating in the Senate
Judiciary Committee, including one that would impose a $10,000 fine for selling
an excessive amount of iodine matrix — an ingredient in the recipe for illegal
methamphetamine.
Lawmakers two years ago enacted legislation that prevented the sale of certain
cold and sinus medications once purchased in massive volumes to sustain meth
labs.
A State Police official, Lt. Mike Goff, said this week the new law had proved to
be effective in eliminating a number of meth production sites in West Virginia.
— E-mail:
mannix@register-herald.com
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