Canadian Trash
In 2003, the City of Toronto closed its landfill and started shipping all its trash to Michigan, and many other Ontario municipalities soon followed suit. Michigan citizens were outraged that our great State had become Canada's dumping ground. This trash poses serious health, safety, and security threats to Michigan families and communities.
Headlines from before the Stabenow-Levin agreement with Ontario officials
In August of 2006, Senators Stabenow and Levin entered into a groundbreaking agreement with Ontario officials to phase out and stop, by the end of 2010, the dumping of 1.5 million tons of Ontario's municipally-managed trash in Michigan.
This agreement was a success. Ontario officials report that as of December 31, 2010, Toronto and three other Ontario municipalities ceased shipping their waste to Michigan. This equates to over 40,000 truckloads of trash that would have been dumped in Michigan each year without this agreement.
Letters from officials in Toronto, Durham, York, and Peel certifying an end to trash shipments into Michigan
The City of Toronto reported that it "has honoured its annual tonnage reduction commitment and on December 31, 2010 will cease shipping municipal solid waste to the Republic Landfill in Michigan." York Region reported that it "has not had garbage shipments to Michigan landfills since August 2008." Effective December 31, 2010, the Regional Municipality of Durham reported that it "will no longer utilise Pine Tree Acres landfill located in the State of Michigan for the disposal of Municipal Solid Waste" The Peel Region of Ontario reported that it had "stopped shipping its municipal solid waste to Michigan at the end of 2008."
What caused Toronto and other cities to ship their trash to Michigan?
The root of the Canadian trash problem is simple economics. Michigan's trash dumping charge is the lowest in the region, which turned our Great Lakes State into a magnet for garbage from Toronto and other Ontario cities. Instead of using their own landfills, Ontario cities started filling up ours. Although these dumping charges are set by the state, Senator Stabenow, Senator Levin and other congressional members took the fight to stop the trash to Congress.
What led to this agreement?
Senators Stabenow and Levin pursued numerous actions at the federal level to address the problem of Canadian trash, including inspection fees at the border on Canadian haulers and requiring safety screenings by Homeland Security. These legislative efforts in the Senate and U.S. House got the attention of the Canadians. In the fall of 2005, these efforts brought Ontario officials to the negotiating table with Senators Stabenow and Levin, and together an agreement was reached that Ontario would stop sending their city trash to Michigan by the end of 2010.
What does the Stabenow-Levin Agreement cover?
The agreement is between Senator Stabenow and Senator Levin with Ontario's Minister of Environment. It also had the full commitment of the City of Toronto and the other key Ontario municipalities that were shipping trash to Michigan. It covers Ontario's "municipally-managed" solid waste shipments to Michigan, which is trash under the control of Ontario and its municipalities. The agreement called for a 20% reduction of municipally-managed waste by the end of 2007, an additional 20% reduction by the end of 2008, and a total elimination of these shipments by the end of 2010. Based on 2005 estimates, Ontario provinces were shipping nearly 1.5 million tons of municipally-managed solid waste into Michigan each year.
What is municipally-managed solid waste?
It is all the waste that comes under the control of their major municipalities and the City of Toronto. It is the type of waste that most people think of as garbage that is picked up by municipal employees or government contractors in garbage cans behind houses and bins that sit behind many commercial establishments.
How much of the total waste coming to Michigan did this agreement cover?
According to a 2008 report of the Congressional Research Service, this agreement covered about 40% of the total waste being shipped from Canada into Michigan. Based on 2005 trash imports, this equates to approximately 1.5 million tons of trash or 40,000 truck loads each year.
What waste is not covered by the agreement?
Michigan also receives non-municipally managed solid waste from Ontario. This agreement does not cover waste under private contract that the Ontario government and its municipalities do not control. Canadians call it Industrial, Commercial and Institutional (IC&I) waste and in Michigan, most of it falls under the general category of "municipal solid waste." IC&I waste is not managed or controlled by the Ontario municipalities; rather it is managed under private contracts. For example, IC&I waste includes waste from factories, construction sites, and other commercial entities.
What can be done to stop the rest of the trash coming into Michigan?
While this agreement is an important victory, the fight to stop the trash is not over. Fundamentally, the financial incentives that make it cheaper for Canadian companies to ship their trash to Michigan instead of dumping it in their own landfills, must be changed. For example, Wisconsin charges $12.99 per ton of trash; Illinois charges $2.00; and Michigan charges only 21 cents per ton of trash. Since dumping charges are set at the state level, this is an issue the new State Legislature and Governor will need to address.
In the coming months, Senator Stabenow will be looking at initiatives at the federal level to address this financial incentive that makes it more profitable for private companies in Canada to ship their trash to Michigan.
One of the reasons the Stabenow-Levin agreement has been successful is because it could not be challenged in court. Of all the proposed solutions to deal with Canadian trash, the Stabenow-Levin agreement is the only one that has shown a real, measurable reduction in waste coming into our state. Many legal experts feel that if proposed federal legislation to simply ban Canadian trash passes, it will be subject to lengthy court challenges under international laws for many years.
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