[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 77 (Wednesday, May 10, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6443-S6447]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




         INTERSTATE TRANSPORTATION OF MUNICIPAL SOLID WASTE ACT

  The Senate continued with the consideration of the bill.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The pending question before the Senate is the 
substitute amendment reported by the Committee on Environment and 
Public Works to S. 534.
  Is there further debate on the bill?
  The Senator from Rhode Island is recognized.
  Mr. CHAFEE. Mr. President, this is the Graham amendment?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. What is before the Senate is the committee-
reported substitute at this point.
  Mr. GRAHAM addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Florida is recognized.
  Mr. GRAHAM. I thank the Chair.


                           Amendment No. 752

 (Purpose: To revise the provision relating to State-mandated disposal 
                               services)


                           Amendment No. 753

 (Purpose: To provide that a law providing for State-mandated disposal 
services shall be considered to be a reasonable regulation of commerce)

  Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. President, I send to the desk two amendments and ask 
for their immediate consideration.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Does the Senator wish these amendments to be 
considered en bloc?
  Mr. GRAHAM. The Senator requests that they be considered en bloc.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. The clerk 
will report.
  The bill clerk read as follows:

       The Senator from Florida [Mr. Graham] proposes en bloc 
     amendments numbered 752 and 753.

  Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of 
the amendments be dispensed with.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The amendments are as follows:
                           Amendment No. 752

       On page 63, strike line 4 and all that follows through page 
     64, line 2, and insert the following:
       ``(e) State-Mandated Disposal Services.--A political 
     subdivision of a State may exercise flow control authority 
     for municipal solid waste and for recyclable material 
     voluntarily relinquished by the owner or generator of the 
     material that is generated within its jurisdiction if, prior 
     to May 15, 1994, the political subdivision--
       ``(1) was responsible under State law for providing for the 
     operation of solid waste facilities to serve the disposal 
     needs of all incorporated and unincorporated areas of the 
     county;
       ``(2) is required to initiate a recyclable materials 
     recycling program in order to meet a municipal solid waste 
     reduction goal of at least 30 percent;
       ``(3) has been authorized by State statute to exercise flow 
     control authority and had implemented the authority through 
     the adoption or execution of a law, ordinance, regulation, 
     contract, or other legally binding provision; and
       ``(4) had incurred, or caused a public service authority to 
     incur, significant financial expenditures to comply with 
     State law and to repay outstanding bonds that were issued 
     specifically for the construction of solid waste management 
     facilities to which the political subdivision's waste is to 
     be delivered.
       (5) the authority under this subsection shall be exercised 
     in accordance with Section 401z(b)(4).
                                                                    ____


                           Amendment No. 753

       On page 65, line 10, strike ``or (d)'' and insert ``(d), or 
     (e)''.
       On page 65, line 3, strike ``or (d)'' and insert ``(d), or 
     (e)''.

  Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. President, these two amendments represent technical 
refinements to a provision of the bill which appears on pages 63 
through 65, which I understand have been agreed to by both sides of the 
aisle, and I ask for their immediate consideration.
  Mr. CHAFEE. Mr. President, indeed, they have been agreed to by this 
side of the aisle, and we are prepared to accept them.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there further debate on the amendments Nos. 
752 and 753? Is there objection to the amendments? If not, the 
amendments are agreed to.
  So the amendments (Nos. 752 and 753) were agreed to.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Florida is recognized.
  Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. President, I wish to express my appreciation to 
Senator Chafee, who, in his usual gracious manner, has been so helpful 
in working through these two technical amendments as well as having 
assisted the committee in bringing to the floor this important piece of 
legislation.
  I would also like to commend the chair of the subcommittee with 
specific responsibility, Senator Smith of New Hampshire, and the 
ranking minority member, Senator Baucus, and Senator Lautenberg for 
their courtesies in the development of these amendments and other 
provisions in the legislation. I would like to take this opportunity to 
make a few remarks on the general subject of title II of this 
legislation which is the provision relating to flow control.
  Mr. CHAFEE. I wonder if the Senator, before he gets into that, would 
like to move to reconsider the vote by which the amendments were agreed 
to.
  Mr. GRAHAM. In further thoughtfulness on the part of the Senator, I 
move to reconsider the votes by which the two amendments were agreed to 
en bloc.
  Mr. CHAFEE. I move to table that motion.
  The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.
  Mr. GRAHAM. I thank you, Mr. President, and I thank Senator Chafee.
  This legislation in title II, which is the title to which my remarks 
will be directed, raises again the fundamental question that this 
Federal Government has dealt with throughout its history, and that is 
the appropriate role of the State government and the National 
Government. In this case, it raises, in stark relief, the question of 
who should decide an issue as basic to our public welfare as the 
disposition of garbage.
  I start from a general presumption that that level of government 
which is closest to the people who will be affected by the action 
should be able to control the action and therefore I have a general 
predisposition toward local and State government having responsibility 
and control. In this case, that predisposition also happens to be in 
the historical responsibility of local government for the control of 
their solid waste and its disposition.
  Let me turn to a little background of how we got to the legislation 
that is before us today. I will use for purposes of my examples 
primarily illustrations from my State of Florida but I believe that 
similar examples could be drawn from any of the other some 35 States 
 [[Page S6444]] which have adopted a flow control process to direct 
their solid waste.
  In the case of my State, this involvement was largely driven by 
environmental and particularly water-related concerns and the impact 
that those proper considerations of environmental circumstances would 
have on the public health. I was concerned in reading the report of the 
committee that the statement is made that the principal issue relative 
to flow control is economics. In my judgment, while economics are 
certainly concerns, the statement made on page 6 that ``The primary 
factor driving the imposition of flow control ordnances is economics'' 
confuses the ends with the means. The economics are a means of 
achieving the end.
  In the case of my State, the end was to have appropriate sites that 
would protect the environment and protect public health. My State is 
one which is growing rapidly. We are adding some 300,000 people every 
year, having just crossed the 14 million size. Eighty percent of the 
population of the State of Florida lives in the coastal zone, basically 
a thin strip of land over pools of water. We depend upon that 
subsurface water for all of our purposes--human consumption, economic 
purposes, agriculture--for this large and growing population and the 
economy which supports that population.
  A number of years ago, it was recognized that if we continued to grow 
at this rapid rate and continued to dispose of our solid waste in the 
traditional pattern that we were going to endanger our underground 
water supply. And, therefore, the State passed a comprehensive solid 
waste management law approximately a decade ago, a law that I am proud 
to say has been described as one of the most progressive in the Nation 
and has been a model for other States. That solid waste management law 
gave a great deal of responsibility to local government, particularly 
counties, to implement solid waste disposal programs. The goal was to 
remove a substantial amount of solid waste from landfills and into 
other disposal methods or into landfills that met a very high standard 
of environmental protection.
  The authority to implement flow control already existed in Florida 
and thus counties used it as a tool to develop a integrated solid waste 
management plan that was in compliance with the State law and that 
addressed the threat of ground water contamination from the more 
traditional, less protected landfills.
  It was in this context, Mr. President, that 2 years ago the U.S. 
Supreme Court issued an opinion, called the Carbone opinion, which 
essentially stated that States were without the authority to grant flow 
control power to their local governments, because the use of that flow 
control could constitute a restraint on interstate commerce.
  That came as a surprise to many who felt that there were few items 
that were as indigenously local as the direction of garbage. The 
Supreme Court reached that conclusion, but went on to provide that it 
was now the responsibility of Congress to set whatever standards it 
felt appropriate in order to authorize local governments to continue 
exercising their flow control authority.
  If I could quote from the concurring opinion of Justice O'Connor who, 
in joining the majority in the Carbone opinion stated that, ``It is 
within Congress' power to authorize local imposition of flow control. 
Should Congress revisit this area, and enact legislation providing a 
clear indication that it intends States and localities to implement 
flow control, we will, of course, defer to that legislative judgment.''
  So what we have before us today is the legislative judgment carrying 
out that empowerment by the U.S. Supreme Court. I am concerned that the 
judgment that is represented in title II of this bill is a narrow 
judgment. It is a judgment which essentially says that as the first 
proposition local governments are denied the authority to engage in 
flow control; that is the ability to direct their solid waste.
  As a second point, it provides that those communities which have 
already engaged in flow control prior to the date of the Supreme Court 
opinion, or prior to the date of May 15, 1994, which was the date upon 
which this initial version of legislation was first proposed, that 
those communities would be allowed to continue to exercise flow control 
for the period of time that was required for that community to meet its 
financial responsibility but in no cases longer than 30 years after the 
passage of this legislation. The implication of that is that no 
community which was not engaged in flow control prior to May 15, 1994, 
would be sanctioned to do so and those communities which were so 
engaged but which met their financial obligations, such as paying off 
the bonds that were necessary to construct a modern landfill or a solid 
waste recycling plant or an incinerator, that once those financial 
obligations were met they would lose their authority to exercise flow 
control and no community, regardless of circumstance, would have flow 
control authority for more than 30 years.
  I am deeply concerned about the philosophy that says that the Federal 
Government is going to assume that degree of policy control offer an 
activity which has been so historically local and which, by all of its 
characteristics, should continue to be local.
  Mr. CHAFEE. I wonder if I could present the counterargument to the 
Senator's proposal. The Senator is saying that it goes against his 
grain and his philosophical belief that a local community cannot impose 
so-called flow control; a local community cannot say: We are going to 
build an incinerator. We are going to bond it with revenue bonds, with 
the revenue coming from the requirement that, for everybody in this 
community and every business, all trash must go to this central 
facility. And the reason we, the town, say that, or the city says that, 
is because we have to pay off the bonds to pay for the facility.
  And the Senator finds it disturbing, and understandably so, that in 
this legislation we are saying, ``No, you cannot do that anymore.
 Oh, yes, you can do it if you have some bonds outstanding.''

  Let us say the bonds have 18 years to go and that is the expected 
life of the facility. But beyond that, no, you cannot have this 
proposal. It is a little bit like, I suppose the Senator would say, Big 
Brother saying to the town of Lakeland, or whatever it is in Florida, 
whatever the town might be, ``You can't do that.''
  Here is the other side of the argument. The other side of the 
argument says the Constitution of the United States as interpreted by 
our courts says you cannot do this to start with; that no way can you 
be able to issue these requirements that everybody in this local 
community must go to point A to dump the trash. You cannot have some 
local hauler come in and take it anyplace--to take it to Rhode Island, 
take it to Texas, take it someplace else, no. The Supreme Court of the 
United States says that it is unconstitutional to have restrictions 
that we provide for in this legislation.
  I look at it another way. Instead of saying it is difficult to 
comprehend why Big Brother should step in and say why you cannot have 
flow control or you can only have it for a limited period, instead the 
Congress of the United States is saying, ``Despite the fact that flow 
control is against the Constitution of the United States because it 
interferes with interstate commerce, we are still going to let you have 
it in order to pay off your bonds.''
  So I look on it more as the Congress giving rather than the Congress 
taking it away.
  Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. President, I think, respectfully, that is not a 
proper reading of what the Supreme Court said in the Carbone case. I 
will just refer you to page 8 of the committee report which quotes the 
language of Justice O'Connor in which she states quite unequivocally:

       It is within Congress' power to authorize local imposition 
     of flow control.

  Mr. CHAFEE. That is right.
  Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. President, I continue the quote:

       Should Congress revisit this area and enact legislation, 
     providing a clear indication that it intends States and 
     localities to implement flow control, we will, of course, 
     defer to that legislative judgment.

  So we have a range of judgments that we can make, including that it 
is appropriate for State and local governments to continue to implement 
flow control, those communities which had done it in the past and those 
which might like to do it in the future and 
 [[Page S6445]] those which have done it in the past which have paid 
off indebtedness and wish to continue to utilize it. It is within our 
power to place the decisionmaking as to whether to use flow control or 
not in the hands of literally tens of thousands of local government 
officials, as opposed to centralizing that decision in Washington, with 
the judgment that is contained in title II of this legislation, which 
essentially is: Thou shalt not engage in flow control unless you were 
doing it before May 1994 and, even then, only for the period necessary 
to pay off your indebtedness and, in no case, more than 30 years from 
now.
  Mr. CHAFEE. I dispute the Senator's characterization of the Congress 
or the Senate saying thou shalt not engage in flow control. It is not 
us that is saying that. The Supreme Court has said, ``You can't do it. 
And, indeed, if you try and do it, you are violating the 
Constitution.''
  But the Supreme Court goes on to say, ``But if you, the Congress, 
want to give them that power, then you have the ability to do so.''
  I do not think it is us imposing a ``thou shalt not'' on them. In 
effect, we are coming to their rescue. It is true, we could be a 
broader rescue mission than we are currently on. The Senator aptly has 
pointed out, all we are doing is limiting our rescue mission; all we 
are saying is we will rescue those towns that have already made the 
commitment. They had imposed flow control saying everything had to go 
to this central landfill or central incinerator, and we are saying you 
can keep it up because you issued bonds thinking the law was the way it 
was, you did it fairly, and along comes the Supreme Court which says it 
is against the Constitution. OK, we will come and help you out.
  That is what we are doing. We are not doing it, as the Senator is 
aptly saying, in perpetuity. We are not saying whatever you want to do 
in the towns is OK. We are limiting it.
  But it is not us who said no to them to start with.
  Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. President, I say to my friend and colleague, the 
Supreme Court has clearly stated, as it does in many of these 
instances, that activities which are violative of the interstate 
commerce clause can be made constitutionally acceptable if Congress 
sets the standards and clearly grants the conditions for that 
authority.
  Mr. CHAFEE. Absolutely.
  Mr. GRAHAM. Justice O'Connor has stated it quite explicitly that we 
have that authority, and I am suggesting that prudence would lead us to 
a position that would say, let us exercise the authority that the 
Supreme Court has held that we can possess under the Constitution in a 
way that decentralizes decisionmaking, that lets local communities, 
with locally elected officials, take into account their local 
conditions.
  For instance, we are about to say to one of the fastest growing 
communities in my State, Volusia County, which contains cities such as 
Daytona Beach and Ormond Beach and DeLand--a very rapidly growing 
area--that they cannot engage in flow control as a means of managing 
their solid waste in such a way as to give maximum protection to their 
vulnerable underground water supply.
  I do not know why we in Washington feel that we know more about the 
sensibilities, the economics, the values, the environment, the public 
health threat of the people in Volusia County than their locally 
elected officials. What purpose are we serving by being so narrow in 
our willingness to offer--my State just a few years ago was one of the 
smallest States in the Union. In fact, we are celebrating our 150th 
anniversary of statehood. When we came into the Nation in the year 
1845, we had only slightly more than 40,000 people. One hundred fifty 
years later, we have 14 million people. Twenty years from now we will 
have 19 million people. They are occupying the same piece of property 
with the same environmental circumstances.
  Many communities, about 15 to 20 in my State, have said, ``We need to 
do a better job of protecting our water supply and inappropriate 
landfills.'' Here is what we are going to do for the citizens of my 
community with the support of the citizens of my community through 
their elected representatives to do so. We are now about to say that 
everybody who did not get on to that train, authorized flow control 
prior to May 1994, are going to be forever shut off.
  I do not understand what public purpose we are advancing by denying 
them the right to do so.
  Mr. CHAFEE. I do not want to quibble over language, but it is not us 
saying you are forever shut off. If we did nothing, you could be shut 
off, if we did not pass a piece of legislation here. What Florida is 
doing now, plus those who want to do it, they would be shut off. I 
guess I am just trying to see where is the nonaction--if we did no 
action, nothing would happen, you would not have flow control.
  Mr. GRAHAM. I am going to describe in a moment the dilemma that a 
person like myself is in, because there clearly is an urgency to act 
for those 15 to 20 communities which had formed an alliance using flow 
control and committed themselves to these major environmentally and 
public health protecting measures. But it wounds and offends me that in 
the same action where we are protecting the past, we are unnecessarily 
closing off the future for those communities which today, and certainly 
in a few years, will be exactly like those that have taken advantage of 
flow control in order to develop these more environmentally and public 
health protecting measures.
  Mr. CHAFEE. Well, the Senator has a good point. The other side of the 
coin is that once you permit this, you are permitting communities to 
set up and operate. That may be all well and good. But BFI, or Waste 
Haulers, or whoever it is, cannot come in there and offer better, 
cheaper service, and some citizen in that community is being deprived 
of choice.
  Mr. GRAHAM. You are taking the position that we here in Washington 
have to be the ``big brother'' to protect 260 million Americans. I do 
not think that the county commissioners of Broward County, FL, or the 
city council of Providence, RI, are insensitive to the desires of their 
citizens. They are the ones who wake up every morning in that 
community. They are the ones who daily deal with these issues which 
are, in many cases, difficult balancing questions. Yes, you could have 
cheaper garbage rates in Broward County if everybody just hauled it to 
the local hole in the ground and dumped it. But you would also be 
putting your water supply at risk. And so the commissioners of that 
community made a judgment that they were prepared to ask their citizens 
to pay higher garbage fees in order to be able to dispose of their 
solid waste in a more environmentally appropriate manner. Why should 
they not be making that decision as opposed to our telling them it is a 
decision that will be unavailable to them?
  Mr. CHAFEE. I think this. First, I am not willing to concede that in 
Broward or Dade County, or wherever it might be, inevitably, if do you 
not have flow control, your waste is going to end up in an 
environmentally damaging situation. That does not necessarily follow. 
We have all kinds of laws on the books dealing with the handling of 
waste in this country. And if some other outfit comes in--Waste 
Management, or whoever it is--and hauls it, they cannot just take it 
and dump it in some lovely field above a ground water area. They have 
to dispose of it in a proper way.
  But the whole root of what we are dealing with is the commerce clause 
of the Constitution of the United States, which says that there should 
be free interstate transportation and movement in our Nation. That has 
served us pretty well. You might say, ``How petty can you get? Why 
should Miami, or wherever, not be permitted to handle their waste, and 
if everybody has to take it to one place, and that is the only place, 
that is the way we want to run our business?'' But the Supreme Court 
has said that is against the Constitution. I know we can fix it up, and 
the Supreme Court, as you pointed out, has also said we can straighten 
it out. So far, we have chosen not to take that extra step.
  Mr. GRAHAM. So we are here, Mr. President, making an important 
political judgment. We have the range of authority to deny totally flow 
control authority to anybody, including those 
 [[Page S6446]] communities which have already utilized it and, in 
reliance upon it, committed themselves to significant financial 
obligations. That is an alternative that is available to us.
  At the other end of the spectrum, we have the authority to grant a 
very broad license to local governments and States to utilize flow 
control.
  What we have chosen to do--and I underscore the word ``chosen''--we 
have selected among options what I will call a targeted grandfather 
approach, in which we have said that for those who were in business as 
of May 1994, and a rather tight definition of what you had to be doing 
in May 1994, all of which is outlined on pages 56 through 58 of the 
legislation, for a specific duration of time, you shall have authority 
to use flow control. Everybody else you excluded.
  Let me, if I could, complete some examples that would give some 
context as to this theory of who should decide as to the range of local 
authority. I mentioned earlier a case of Volusia County, Deland, and 
the largest city, which is Daytona Beach, a fast-growing area in east 
central Florida. The county currently does not have flow control. The 
county was wise a number of years ago when it was able to purchase a 
large piece of land at a low price and has been, in part because of 
that, extremely successful in keeping its tipping fees--that is the 
charges to use the landfill--at a low rate, the lowest in the State, 
and still provide for an integrated solid waste management system.
  At this point, they are not facing any particular competition and, 
therefore, the county has not had a need for flow control. But the 
director of solid waste in Volusia County is concerned about the 
future. The director recognizes that he may not be able to effectively 
address the public safety issues in our State--the threat of ground 
water contamination--without the ability to control the waste stream, 
should a private facility decide to open a facility in the area that 
undercuts the counties' tipping fees.
  In addition, the director of solid waste is concerned about the 
ability of the county to float bonds in the future when it needs to 
expand its current facilities. Flow control authority would enable the 
county to have a stronger bond rating. Therefore, the absence of 
prospective flow control is a serious concern to this rapidly expanding 
county in Florida.
  The dilemma that I mentioned to Senator Chafee that many of us feel 
is that we recognize the sense of urgency to pass legislation that 
reempowers those communities which had been using flow control and 
which had relied upon it. We all agree that we must act quickly to 
address the financial crisis that those communities are facing now.
  Again, I use an example in Florida of Dade County. Dade County a 
number of years ago, utilizing the State authority for flow control in 
order to carry out its responsibilities for an integrated solid waste 
system, set up a series of modern landfills and incinerators. Since the 
Supreme Court action, which has undercut its ability to use flow 
control to assure that there was a sufficient amount of solid waste 
going to these facilities in order to generate enough revenue to pay 
for the cost of operation, maintenance, and debt service on those 
facilities, the county has been losing 45 percent of its waste, which 
equates to $53 to $68 million a year in revenue. Moody's Investors 
Service has recently downgraded Dade County's solid waste revenue bond 
from an ``A'' to ``Baa1.'' Moody's specifically stated that the 
significant diversion of waste to out-of-county facilities undermined 
the current rate structure and that the lack of a long-term strategy 
jeopardizes the system's continued ability to meet financial 
obligations.
  The county is also faced with an inability to plan for future 
capacity and to ensure that recycling goals will be met in the future, 
that is, future planning has been eliminated due to the severity of the 
current fiscal crisis.
  Half of the bulk waste recycling centers in Dade County have now been 
closed. These centers used to accept old furniture, appliances, tires, 
and other materials that could be recycled rather than placed in a 
landfill.
  Dade County had extensive school education programs encouraging young 
people to become involved in appropriate activities for the disposal of 
solid waste, especially directed at recycling. Those school programs 
had to be eliminated because of the financial crisis.
  Dade County had an active mulching program which has been 
dramatically scaled back now to a bare minimum. This program in the 
past provided mulching services to residents who brought yard waste and 
tree branches, and the mulch was distributed to homeowners and farmers. 
Now it goes directly to a landfill so that the county can come closer 
to meeting its waste level requirements.
  Elimination of innovative recycling programs has also been a 
consequence of this financial crisis. Phone books, high-grade trash, 
tires, and destruction and demolition debris which used to be recycled 
are now headed for the landfill.
  The clean organic waste composting programs are in jeopardy, due to 
insufficient waste to implement the plan beyond a demonstration phase.
  Those are some of the urgent consequences of the Supreme Court's 
action for a community which had adopted flow control, and based upon 
flow control, an integrated solid waste management program. They had 
incurred very substantial, in the case of Dade County, over $100 
million of indebtedness in order to pay for all those facilities.
  It is because of communities such as that across America that there 
is an urgency to pass legislation that will provide for reempowering of 
those communities to utilize flow control and regain control of an 
important segment of a traditional local government responsibility.
  Mr. President, I am concerned that there is a bleak outlook for 
communities in the future. There are many other communities which are 
going to want to do what counties like Dade have already done. That is, 
utilize flow control.
  The ability of the local government to direct where its trash will be 
stored, as unromantic a function as government could engage in, but an 
important function which touches the lives of every citizen in the 
community; to allow the people who are elected in that community to 
make the judgment as to what is most appropriate to meet the variety of 
needs in that community.
  As I mentioned earlier, when my State came in the Union 150 years 
ago, it was the smallest, the poorest, and the most remote State in the 
Union, with a population of slightly more than 40,000. Today it has a 
population of over 14 million. Twenty years from now, at current growth 
rates, it will have a population nearing 20 million from its current 14 
million.
  Are we to assume there will not be a similar set of concerns about 
protecting our ground water supplies, protecting public health 20 years 
from now, as there was when these communities that today are engaging 
in flow control adopted their plans? Clearly, the answer to that is no, 
there will be a similar need for this type of local control of where 
trash is disposed of in order to meet local environmental and public 
health circumstances.
  I believe strongly that these decisions should be made at the local 
level by those elected officials who are closest to the situation. This 
is not a conflict between government control and free market. In fact, 
in my State, most of the actual work of solid waste management is done 
by private firms.
  As an example in Hillsborough County, the county seat of which is 
Tampa, waste energy facility is operated by Ogden-Martin; landfill by 
Waste Management; BFI operates a majority of the residential recycling 
program. A wonderful example of a public-private partnership. In Lake 
County in the center of the State, the waste energy facility is also 
operated by Ogden-Martin, and the county has franchise agreements to 
haul solid waste with three different private companies.
  This is not an issue of the free market versus government control. It 
is an example of local communities, through locally-elected 
representatives, taking control of the responsibility for their 
destiny, particularly protecting one of the most critical resources of 
that community, its ground water.
   [[Page S6447]] Mr. President, I believe that it is urgent that we 
pass legislation on this subject. I would hope that before we complete 
our deliberations that we would think seriously about the restraints 
that we are imposing--I think, unnecessarily--that we would think about 
the degree to which we are Federalizing what has been a traditional 
local responsibility, the decision of where to dispose of garbage.
  We are going to continue to be engaged as we have over the past 
several weeks in some fundamental questions of what level of government 
should decide important public issues and whether those decisions 
should be made one time here in Washington or should be made 50, or 
500, or 5,000 times at State and local levels.
  Earlier today, we passed legislation that changed over two centuries 
of American law relative to product liability. For two centuries that 
responsibility was placed at the State level. States had the 
responsibility to understand their own history, culture, politics, 
economics, and they make a judgment as to how these matters of civil 
justice should be resolved.
  Colorado is a different State than Florida. South Carolina is a 
different State than South Dakota. I believe in the proposition that 
the citizens of those individual States should make judgments as to 
what is appropriate for them today and in the future.
  I strongly feel that that is also true of the issue of how to protect 
natural resources, and how the disposition of solid waste affects the 
protection of those resources. The situation is different from a 
relatively arid State in the West than it is in a subtropical 
environment in my State of Florida. The situation is different in the 
State with the peaks of Colorado, from the State that is relatively 
close to its water supply as we are with our high underground surface 
water in Florida.
  I believe that prudent policy for the future should be as it has been 
in the past. That it is a responsibility of locally-elected officials 
who are accountable to the people that elect them, to make a judgment 
as to what is in the best interest. They would have the same range of 
choices that we would have, but they would be making it based on their 
understanding of the specific circumstances in their community.
  I think that is intelligent federalism which we should apply to this 
issue of solid waste disposal in the future, as we have in the past. 
That it is not appropriate for Congress to make a decision here today 
that two centuries of American tradition will be overturned, and now we 
are going to federalize into a single decision here in Washington for 
all of our States and all of our local communities one answer to the 
question, of how they can dispose of their garbage.
  Mr. President, I think the American people feel we have a lot of 
important things to be dealing with here in Washington. Clearly, one of 
those is going to be how to bring the Federal budget into balance.
  I would suggest that that is a demanding enough responsibility for 
Senators to make. We do not have much time left over to decide how 
Quincy or Greeley will dispose of their garbage. We ought to let the 
people in Greeley, CO, and Quincy, FL, decide how to dispose of their 
garbage and put our attention to what the public expects Congress to 
do--how are we going to balance our budget.
  If we allocate responsibilities in that way, I think both the 
citizens of Greeley, the citizens of Quincy, and the citizens of 
America, would feel as if we were doing the jobs that they expected the 
Senate to do, and how we were graded on how well we balanced the 
budget, would hold Senators to account and how well the county and city 
commissioners of Greeley and Quincy did their job would be the basis 
upon which they would be held accountable by their vote.
  Mr. President, in conclusion, I appreciate the fact that my friend 
and colleague, the junior Senator from Rhode Island and the chairman of 
the Environment and Public Works Committee, accepted the amendments 
which I offered earlier. I hope that during this process we will give 
serious attention to the question of, do we really want to federalize 
the issue of disposal of local garbage? Or would we not be more prudent 
to accept the invitation of the Supreme Court to allow this to continue 
to be a responsibility of properly elected State and local officials?
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call.
  Mr. DASCHLE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. DASCHLE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be 
permitted to speak as this morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  

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