A Utah lawmaker believes he has found a way to boost oversight at the state’s landfills, while cutting taxes for the waste-storage industry at the same time.
One catch: it will require an element of trust.
Rep. Lee Perry, R-Perry, is proposing a system of self-inspections at the state’s 168 landfills, an idea that drew a positive reception Thursday before the House Public Utilities, Energy and Technology Committee. Members voted unanimously to send the measure, HB373, to the full House for further debate.
Environmental advocates are not keen on the idea.
“The concept of a regulated entity doing ‘self inspection’ is a conflict-of-interest,” Scott Williams, executive director of HEAL Utah, an environmental group, said in an email. “And it makes a mockery of the need for industries that present risk to the public’s health to be held accountable by an independent inspector.”
Under current state law, solid waste facilities are supposed to be inspected by the Utah Division of Waste Management and Radiation Control, to ensure that landfills abide by the terms of their permits, operate safely, and don’t accept types of waste they aren’t equipped to handle.
But after spending a year going through into that state agency’s records, Perry said he found these inspections don’t always take place in a timely manner.
“We found we had waste facilities that weren’t inspected — some hadn’t been inspected for six years,” Perry said. In the same time period, he said, another landfill had been inspected 28 times.