Wood County garbage dumped outside the county will soon be charged a fee for crossing county lines.
In an effort to not let waste haulers "cheat" by using other landfills, the county’s solid
waste district is implementing a "flow control designation."
That means that haulers taking local trash to sites other than the Wood County Landfill, near Bowling
Green, and Evergreen Landfill, in Northwood, will have to pay a fee of $2 per ton to the Wood County
Solid Waste District.
"This way, everybody pays a fair share," said Ken Rieman, coordinator of the solid waste
district.
According to Rieman, materials currently being disposed outside the county do not pay a fair share to
support state-mandated programs and the county solid waste plan. The need is even greater now since the
district is operating with 70 percent less revenue than previously received, he told the county
commissioners Thursday as he presented the "flow control" proposal.
Currently, several waste haulers take trash to landfills in neighboring counties. Rather than increasing
the local disposal fees, Rieman said the decision was made to tack on the fee for tonnage dumped
elsewhere.
"It’s a fairness issue," he said.
The fees are expected to generate about $75,000 a year for the district.
"We are trying to balance the budget," Rieman said.
Wood County Commissioner Tim Brown questioned how the fees will be enforced.
"What are the teeth in it?" he asked.
Albin Bauer, with the law firm of Eastman and Smith, said that once the fees are enacted, haulers taking
trash over county lines without paying the fees will be in violation of the Ohio Revised Code. Fines of
up to $5,000 a day can be levied against the haulers.
It will be the responsibility of the trash haulers to notify the landfill of the source of the garbage.
Then it will be up to the landfill to collect the fee and remit it to the Wood County Solid Waste
District.
Bauer said similar fees have been enforced in other Ohio counties.
"If you have to do it, it can be done," he told the commissioners.
In some counties, undercover law enforcement officers have been used to follow trash trucks crossing
county lines, and in others, loads have been tracked electronically. In all cases, judges have not been
sympathetic to violating trash haulers, Bauer said.
"It can be enforced and we have done it," he said.
It will be up to the county to send notices of the fee to the top 50 industrial and institutional waste
generators in the county, plus leaders of local municipalities and townships.