District allowed to refuse trash

The rule will go into effect June 1, 2009.

CANTON (AP) — A judge has ruled that a three-county waste district can refuse trash from other counties if they recycle less than the counties that are home to the district, beginning in mid-2009.

The Stark-Tuscarawas-Wayne Solid Waste Management District’s new power could be bad news for Summit and Cuyahoga counties, which surround Akron and Cleveland, respectively.

Stark Common Pleas Judge Richard Reinbold Jr. ruled that a new rule adopted by the garbage district is valid and the district is within its rights to reject waste from other counties if the shipping counties recycle less trash than Stark, Tuscarawas and Wayne recycle.

However, Reinbold postponed enactment of the rule from Jan. 1 until June 1, 2009.

Reinbold ruled in a lawsuit by the National Solid Wastes Management Association, a national trade group based in Washington. The decision was dated Tuesday and released Friday.

The association is disappointed with the decision, said David Biderman, a lawyer for the group. But the association is pleased that the judge delayed implementation of the rule and it hasn’t decided whether to appeal it, he said.

Yolanda Walker, executive director of the Summit-Akron Solid Waste Management Authority, was surprised at Reinbold’s decision. She said she intends to confer with legal counsel. The county appealed it to the Ohio Environmental Review Appeals Commission.

Most of Summit County’s annual 450,000 tons of trash goes to two giant landfills in Stark County: American Landfill and the Countywide Recycling and Disposal Facility. The latter is the subject of a county health department effort to shut it down because of fires and other problems.

Stark-Tuscarawas-Wayne district officials praised Reinbold’s decision.

“We’re very, very pleased and it is certainly a victory for the district that will have big impacts,” said David Held, executive director of the agency. “It’s also a victory for recycling and the environment.”

The ruling could force many Ohio counties to boost recycling of industrial and commercial- residential waste.

The rule was adopted in November 2006 after Stark, Wayne and Tuscarawas officials said they were tired of being a dumping ground for 13 percent of Ohio’s trash. In addition to Stark, trash is dumped at Kimble Landfill in Tuscarawas County.

The three-county district took in about 3.5 million tons of trash in 2005: 900,000 tons from its three counties, 520,000 tons from out of state and 2 million tons from other Ohio counties.

Under the rule, other Ohio counties would be permitted to ship waste to the landfills in Stark, Wayne and Tuscarawas counties only if they equal or surpass what the three counties are doing to recycle.

Summit recycles more than the district to the south, but that could change in the next two years as new recycling efforts get under way in Stark, Wayne and Tuscarawas.

The rules would require that other counties comply by recycling more residential-commercial and more industrial waste than Stark, Wayne and Tuscarawas counties or by providing access to recycling to more residents than the three counties do.

The Ohio EPA says the three counties in 2005 recycled 11 percent of their residential-commercial trash and 71 percent of their industrial waste.

The state requires that 25 percent of residential-commercial trash and 50 percent of industrial waste be recycled.