WASHINGTON — It’s a trashy deal all right. Two Michigan Democrats who have been lobbying to restrict trash hauled from Canada have announced a deal struck with Ontario Environment officials to eliminate about half the waste trucked into state landfills by 2010.

The deal, according to Associate Press, would phase out shipments of municipal trash. Municipalities would reduce their shipments by 20 percent by the end of 2007, by 40 percent by 2008 and eliminate the waste by 2010.

It does not include, however, industrial and commercial waste, which accounts for more than half of the nearly 4 million metric tons of Canadian trash entering Michigan annually.

About 350 truckloads of the trash enter the U.S. daily at Detroit-Windsor, Ont. and Port Huron-Sarnia border points.

Toronto, the largest exporter of trash to the US, has just a few
years to find alternate garbage dumping arrangements

The deal is an apparent victory for Sen. Debbie Stabenow and Sen. Carl Levin, who along with many Michigan residents have long complained Michigan-bound trucks carrying Toronto’s trash clogs roadways and raises security concerns at border crossings.

In return, Stabenow and Levin said they would not push forward legislation that would saddle Canadian companies that haul trash into state landfills with about $420 in fees per truck to pay for security inspections.

That proposal also required US Customs to review its screening process for municipal solid waste. If a system wasn’t developed in the near future, the proposal would have require Homeland Security to stop trash trucks from entering the U.S. altogether.

Ontario’s Minister of the Environment said municipalities would have to find alternative waste management options 2010.

Last week, Halton Region, near Toronto, announced plans to build a plant in Milton, Ont. that could take as much as 70 percent of the GTA’s solid waste and turn it into electricity. The facility would use incineration or other thermal technologies to transform the waste.

BRASS WASTED:

Meanwhile, U.S. Customs’ deadline for carriers hauling municipal solid waste shipments of “Common Commodity Classification Codes” to switch to PAPS kicks in today.

All C-4 codes using the MUW (Municipal Solid Waste), WQC (Sewage Sludge) and CS3 (Construction Debris 2) product identifier will be removed from the BRASS “line-release” database.

Shippers will now have to make new arrangements with brokers to ensure PAPS transmissions are filed within the time window that CBP allows before cargo arrives at the border.

Thanks to lobbying by the Ontario Trucking Association, CBP granted a one month extension — from July 31, to Sept. 1, 2006 — before enforcing the rule.

“The trucking industry has known for sometime that BRASS would be phased out; but the schedule for phase-out has been a significant unknown,” said OTA president David Bradley in a press release last month. “Drivers need to be educated on the PAPS system and custom brokers and their customers have to make adjustments. The one month delay will allow a smoother transition for all involved in the municipal waste supply chain.”