July 14, 2010
Lawmakers seek bottle law compromise to include water drinks
State lawmakers are hashing out a compromise that for the first time since the landmark bottle law took effect three decades ago could expand the nickel deposit to include bottled water, among the most common drinks sold and most prevalent sources of litter.
Expansion of the law would represent a sea change for state lawmakers, whose bills have died each time before getting a committee vote for the past 15 years.
Members of the Joint Committee on Telecommunications, Utilities, and Energy, which has jurisdiction over the bill, are expected to meet in an executive session today and approve an agreement that would put the bill on a path for full votes in the House and Senate. Governor Deval Patrick supports expanding the bottle law, and both committee chairmen said they favor, in principle, expanding the law.
“I’ve been in favor of the bottle bill for months,’’ said Senator Michael Morrissey, a Quincy Democrat who cochairs the committee and said a majority of his fellow senators on the committee support the bill. “I want this on the agenda. We need to put a bill out and let the full bodies of the House and Senate debate it and amend it. But we need to get it out.’’
Morrissey has proposed language that would limit the bill’s expansion to include only “water, nutritionally enhanced water, and any beverage that is identified through the use of letters, words, or symbols on such beverage’s product label as a type of water.’’ His bill would exclude sports drinks, such as Gatorade or fruit juices, as well as proposed increases in fees for redemption centers, both of which he would like to see in a final bill.
“I think it’s easier to move it along if we take a smaller bite,’’ he said.
Morrissey vowed to report the bill out of committee, but it remains uncertain whether Representative Barry Finegold, his cochairman, would agree to a full committee vote, meaning the bill could be reported out of the committee favorably or unfavorably. A favorable report would make it easier to receive a full vote in both chambers.
Morrissey said Finegold, an Andover Democrat, told him he wants to work it out.
In a telephone interview, Finegold would not say how he would vote. “We’re still working on it,’’ he said. “I’m trying to get members’ support.’’
Proponents of expanding the bottle law, which passed in 1981 when lawmakers overrode a veto by Governor Edward J. King, argue it is needed to respond to the dramatic rise in the number of plastic containers. The Container Recycling Institute, a California group that monitors the recycling of bottles, estimated that Americans more than doubled the amount of bottled water they drank between 2002 and 2006, when more than 28 billion water bottles ended up in incinerators, landfills, or as litter.
Moreover, advocates say it could provide a timely boost to lagging state revenues. The Patrick administration estimates that the state would raise about $58 million by allowing the redemption of an additional 1.5 billion containers a year, or about $20 million more than the state earns from the current law, and that municipalities would save as much as $7 million in disposal costs. That additional revenue, however, would be reduced if the final bill included only bottled water.
Senator Cynthia Creem, a Newton Democrat and chief sponsor of the bottle bill in the Senate, said that she would like to see the bill include other beverages but that expanding the law to include bottled water alone would represent “a great victory.’’
“Bottled water is what gets abused the most; we never anticipated years ago that so many people would be drinking bottled water,’’ Creem said. “I would hope that Barry Finegold would see passing this bill as a huge victory for the environment.’’
Opponents of the bottle law say expanding it amounts to a tax that raises the cost of beverages, promotes fraud by encouraging cross-border sales of bottles, and curbs efforts to expand other recycling programs. They say Massachusetts would be better off encouraging curbside recycling.
“Just adding bottled water to the law makes no environmental sense,’’ said Chris Flynn, president of the Massachusetts Food Association, representing more than 50 supermarkets throughout Massachusetts and has long lobbied against expanding the bottle law.
Officials at the state Department of Environmental Protection, however, note that 80 percent of the containers included in the existing bottle law — carbonated soda, beer, and malt beverages — get recycled, while 67 percent of non-deposit containers end up as litter.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2010/07/14/lawmakers_seek_bottle_law_compromise_to_include_water_drinks/
