landfills

Let me go ahead and admit that I am understandably biased on this post: I'm a former Democratic House member who is married to an outstanding current Democratic House member, works in State government on the legislature's front lines, and serves in several roles in county, district and State party committees.

We are currently under a year-long moratorium on new landfills in our state that was initiated in the last general assembly. This leaves collecting information on landfills and and passing meaningful legislation on the matter one of the biggest tasks facing this session of the general assembly.

Two major problems with the way landfill siting has occured is that localities are given exclusive control and there is no statewide fee for dumping trash at a landfill like there is in almost all other states. These two factors combined to make poor rural counties targets for large, environmentally hazardous landfills. Some of my past posts on landfills can be found here.

Yesterday, DENR came out in favor of two reforms that would significantly reduce the potential for North Carolina's rural areas ending up a magnet for out of state trash: 1) initiating a tipping fee and 2) having the State take more control of the approval process for the landfills. From WRAL: