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Senate Co-Sponsorship Memoranda
Senate of Pennsylvania
Session of 2021 - 2022
Regular Session
MEMORANDUM
| Posted: | April 20, 2022 04:35 PM |
|---|---|
| From: | Senator Scott Martin and Sen. Steven J. Santarsiero, Sen. Amanda M. Cappelletti |
| To: | All Senate members |
| Subject: | Aiding Counties in the Disposal of Household Hazardous Waste |
| In the near future, Senators Santarsiero, Cappelletti and I will be introducing legislation to allow counties to maximize their use of Pennsylvania’s hazardous waste collection program. Most Pennsylvanians do not have the ability to safely dispose of their household’s hazardous waste (HHW), so they rely on their county to host free collection events. Each year, these popular events collect millions of pounds of waste statewide. HHW includes unused household products that may explode, catch fire, or be generally harmful to the environment if not properly disposed, such as paint, pesticides, pool chemicals, drain cleaners, batteries, and motor oil. To help counties host these important events, Act 190 of 1996 was signed into law providing a state funding match of up to $100,000 per county. Unfortunately, this limit has not been increased even though the cost for counties to hold these events has increased exponentially over the last two decades. In fact, this program remained cost neutral until approximately 2018. At that time, costs to collect and process HHW began to rise dramatically to almost 40% more than in prior years. Therefore, our bill would increase the limit on matching funds that each county may receive from $100,000 to $250,000. That said, despite this proposed 150% increase in that particular cap, given recent annual expenditures by counties on this program, there would still be no need to increase the funding allocated by Act 190. The ultimate result of this legislation would be additional funds being made available at no additional expense to the few counties that have reached the statutory cap in recent years. Please join us in supporting this important legislation. |
Introduced as SB1220