Going Against the Flow

Free market and environmental organizations fight government garbage monopolies.

Ed Carson from the December 1995 issue

Free market and environmental organizations don't often find themselves on the same side.

But they have formed an unlikely alliance, including the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the

National Resources Defense Council, Greenpeace, and the Reason Foundation, to oppose con

gressional efforts to reintroduce "flow control"requiring trash haulers to dispose of their

garbage at a government-designated facility.

The Supreme Court ruled in 1993 that such regulations violate the Commerce Clause of the

Constitution, which delegates authority over interstate commerce to Congress. Since then, state

and local governments have lobbied Congress hard to let them have their favored waste-manage

ment "tool" back. They argue that without such authority, many cities and counties risk default

ing on bonds for government-owned facilities or incurring penalties with private companies that

have built sites in exchange for a guaranteed flow of garbage. Taxpayers, they say, would end up

picking up the tab.

But Jonathan Adler of the Competitive Enterprise Institute says taxpayers are already paying: "They'll pay either transparently through direct taxation, or hidden through higher tipping fees like they are now." Tipping feesthe amounts landfills charge to receive refuse are 40 percent higher at sites shielded from competition, according to a study by the National Economic Research Associates.

Environmentalists don't like the local trash monopolies because they often use incinerators.

"What we discovered was that flow control was designed to support enormous garbage incinerators," says Larry Shapiro of the New York Public Interest Research Group.

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