Agenda - Council - 09/13/1982 - Special

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I I ! I I I I I I '1 I I I 34 The financing of compensation schemes varies from state to state. Requirements for hazardous and solid waste operators to carry liability insurance may either be a total operator responsibility or a combined state/operator responsibility. States may choose to appropriate money from general revenues to establish trust funds but, it is much more common to tax facility operators, generators or both, or to levy fees on waste haulers. If operators are taxed, they may be required to make lump-sum payments as well as incremental payments. For example, in Kansas, a hazardous waste facility operator must make a lump-sum payment to the state not to exceed $25,000 before facility operation can begin. After the first year, fees are assessed at a rate of $.25 per cubic yard of hazardous waste dumped at the facility. The amount of money kept in this type of contingency fund is as high as $15 million in Wisconsin, and as low at $3 million in New Hampshire. Fees assessed on either generators of hazardous waste or waste disposal facility operators vary from 25 cents per cubic yard to slightly more than $2.00 per cubic yard. The few states with contingency funds use different taxing mechanisms to finance them. In New Jersey, the contingency fund is financed by a tax on waste accepted at landfills. The present tax is 15 cents per cubic yard of solid waste and .4 cents per gallon of liquid. Proposed legislation would raise the tax to 45 cents per cubic yard. Two-thirds of the 45 cents would be deposited in an interest-bearing account to be used for closure of the facil- ity. The remaining 15 cents would be paid into the Sanitary Landfill Facility Contingency Fund. In Kentucky, a county has the power to tax up to five percent of the gross receipts of a solid waste or hazardous waste facility operation. Revenues from this tax are placed in the county's general fund to be used to defray the loss of general revenues in the county caused by facility operation. In Connecticut, which has a similar statutory provision, a hazardous waste disposal operator must pay the host community either 5 cents per gallon of hazardous waste received on a quarterly basis, or make payment as follows: for gross receipts under $1.25 million, a 10 percent surcharge is imposed; between $1.25 million and $2.5 million, 5 percent; over $2.5 million, 2.5 percent.