By Mike Householder
Associated Press
DETROIT (AP) -- Four Canadian municipalities, including the City of Toronto, have stopped trucking their trash to Michigan, the state's U.S. senators said Monday.
Democrats Debbie Stabenow and Carl Levin announced they've been given assurances that officials from the Ontario governments will honor an agreement the sides negotiated four years ago to stop shipments of city waste to Michigan as of Dec. 31, 2010.
"We want to thank our neighbors in Canada for being good neighbors, for keeping their word, working with us every step of the way," Stabenow said during an afternoon news conference at her office in Detroit.
She said the agreement prevents more than 40,000 trash trucks from entering the state and stops 1.5 million tons of waste from being dumped here.
The Stabenow-Levin agreement was negotiated with Ontario's minister of the environment in 2006 and called for the phase-out and elimination of city waste shipments by the end of last year.
In addition to confirmation from Ontario's environment minister, John Wilkinson, the senators received letters from the four major Toronto-area municipalities confirming their waste shipments to Michigan had stopped.
"While I was not in my current position in 2006 when this agreement was reached, I would like to stress that I share your views related to the importance of this agreement and want to assure you that I take these commitments very seriously," Wilkinson wrote in his letter.
Instead of sending their waste to Michigan, the municipalities will use new landfill capacity in Ontario and other waste management alternatives, including diversion and waste-to-energy facilities, Stabenow said.
But there's still much work to be done on the issue, considering the city shipments being halted represent only 40 percent of the trash entering the state from Canada. Waste from private companies -- construction and industry and from other sources -- will continue to come in.
Stabenow vowed to continue working to end that practice as well, but noted it might be more difficult considering existing economic conditions.
Michigan charges 21 cents per ton of trash, the senator's office said, compared with Illinois' rate of $2 per ton and the $12.99 per ton that Wisconsin demands. Stabenow said she plans to discuss Michigan's relatively low rate with the state's new governor, Republican Rick Snyder, and the Legislature.
"We should not be accepting trash from other states or other countries. What we're here to celebrate today is a huge step forward in that fight to stop that and make sure Michigan landfill space is for our own waste," said Macomb County Commissioner Fred Miller, whose county contains the Pine Tree Acres landfill in Lenox Township that takes in a lot of the trash.
Michigan residents long have complained that trucks carrying Canadian garbage cause environmental and health problems, harm the state's roads and create security risks because of the difficulty of screening trash for contraband.
And a few high-profile accidents involving Canadian trash trucks have not helped matters.
One of those happened in 2003, shortly after the Toronto shipments began.
A woman was injured when a Canadian trash truck rear-ended her car not far from the big Carleton Farms dump in Wayne County's Sumpter Township, sending it into oncoming traffic, where her car was struck by another trash truck.
"We are the Great Lakes State, not the Great Waste State," Stabenow said.
Published: Wed, Jan 19, 2011
