Political Quotes

“one of the many items that the Senate failed to address during this Congress is legislation that would allow the states to protect themselves from unwanted out-of-state garbage. Three separate bills were offered in the Senate on this issue and each had merit, at least as a point of departure. In fact two of the bills incorporated elements that easily passed the Senate a few years ago. The Environment and Public Works Committee held a hearing on these bills but failed to move any of the bills forward. This is more than disappointing. For a state like Virginia that is now importing over 7 million tons of municipal solid waste each year, with no way to limit the growth of this unwanted import, it is important that the committee and the full Senate act on legislation. Seven million tons of imported solid waste represents 280,000 truck loads of waste moving into the Commonwealth of Virginia each year. The traffic this generates is reason alone to authorize additional state controls. But there are other reasons. Cheap landfill disposal due to an over abundance of capacity, has made us less vigilant about recycling. And although new federal landfill standards protect our environment better than the old standards, today's landfills are much larger than yesterdays, and we are not yet certain that all the engineering improvements we have made are enough. We may not know if these new landfills leak for a few more years.”