DENR seeks 'good faith effort' from counties on ban

State officials say enforcement of landfill ban on certain items doesn't involve searches, fines

Presentations from the meeting (all files PDF):

• Laura Boothe (DENR): Proposed Ozone Rule and Anticipated Comments
• Scott Mouw (DENR): Status, History and Effects of Material Disposal Bans
• Division of Water Quality report to Compost Operation Stakeholder Advisory Group

By Todd McGee
Communications Director

Counties will not be punished if banned materials wind up in their landfills as long as the county is making a good faith effort to comply with the new bans, said an official with the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) during the NCACC Environment Steering Committee's Feb. 10 meeting.

Scott Mouw and Paul Crissman from the N.C. Division of Pollution Prevention and Environmental Assistance discussed the status, history and effects of material disposal bans. Mouw discussed the economic reasons behind bans on plastic bottles and wooden pallets and cited the "tremendous" demand for these raw materials.

Mouw said the amount of materials being recycled is increasing significantly across the state. He cited a survey of local governments that showed the landfill bans helped increase awareness among citizens about the need to recycle and that many governments and haulers were also participating in the education process.

Crissman, a section chief with the Division of Waste Management, discussed DENR's vision for enforcing the bans and said that his department is limited in the amount of inspections it can perform.

"Our goal is compliance and understanding, not penalties and fines," he said. "There was a lot of pressure on us to come up with an enforcement policy. We are guaranteed to disappoint people. We had people angry at us because we were not looking into people's trash cans."

Crissman said that as long as a local government is attempting to comply with the bans, there would not be a penalty if DENR determines that a landfill actually violates the new laws.

"We have decided that the presence of a program constitutes compliance," he said.

So far, Crissman said his office has not received any complaints about a landfill not complying with the ban on plastic bottles.

The steering committee meeting began with a joint session with the Agriculture Steering Committee. The two groups heard a presentation from Steven Burke, president and CEO of the Biofuels Center of North Carolina (see Agriculture Steering Committee wrap-up for more information about the joint session).

An official with the DENR Division of Air Quality told committee members that DENR is expected to lobby the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to set the new National Ambient Air Quality Standard (NAAQS) at the high end of the range proposed by EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson.

In January, the EPA announced that it would propagate a new standard that would lower the primary eight-hour ozone standard to a range from 0.060-0.070 parts per million (ppm). The EPA is accepting public comments through March 22.

Laura Boothe from DENR said she believed that DENR's response would likely be to encourage the EPA to adopt the higher standard of 0.070 ppm. If EPA chooses the lowest possible standard of 0.060 ppm, then much of the state would be above the allowable limits, Booth said.

DENR is also expected to express concerns about the proposed secondary standard, which is designed to account for the impact of ozone on plants. The department believes more scientific research is needed before a secondary approach can be adopted and also believes that EPA needs to recognize that different areas of the country may benefit from different secondary levels.

"We are pretty sure they are going to go with a secondary standard," Booth said. "It is designed to account for the cumulative effects of repeated ozone exposure."

Committee member Allen Hardison provided an update on the Compost Operation Stakeholder Advisory Group. Hardison is the NCACC appointee to this group, which has so far met twice. The Division of Water Quality is attempting to regulate runoff from yard waste and compost facilities as wastewater and is basing this decision on a definition of stormwater runoff contained in the Clean Water Act.

Steering Committee Chairman Chuck McGrady of Henderson County set the committee's next meeting for Wednesday, May 5, beginning at 1 p.m. at the Albert Coates Local Government Center in Raleigh.