This morning the campaign released a report on Michigan recycling entitled “The Cost of Delay: The Local Price of Obstruction on Michigan Recycling Funding.” I went up to the former site of the Northport Recycling Center, which the county closed last month due to lack of funding, to highlight the fact that we’ve lost out on over $3 million of state recycling funding in the last two years, and to call for action on the state Recycling and Waste Diversion Fund. The legislation to create this fund has been stalled in the House Natural Resources, Great Lakes, Land Use, and the Environment Committee, which my opponent chairs.

This chart details how much our four counties have lost as a result of this legislative obstruction:

Recent events in Northwest Michigan highlight the need for state funding. Today’s Record-Eagle notes that the Grand Traverse County Commission just approved a waste surcharge to fund that county’s recycling program for another year or two after a long and contentious debate. In Mansitee, the County Commission is sponsoring a summit on October 30 at which they will discuss ways of moving forward on a recycling program there. Here in Leelanau, the commission has closed both the Northport and Cedar recycling centers and is charging a fee to residents of seven of the eleven townships to continue what’s left of our recycling program. This has made it a crime for residents of four Leelanau County townships to recycle! It’s amazing that in 2006, with Michigan’s recycling rate the lowest in the Great Lakes region, it is a crime for local people to recycle. But this is not all the commission’s fault: the budget realities left them with little choice. And if the state had provided the $713,918 Leelanau County has lost out on in the last two years, this wouldn’t be an issue at all.

The common-sense idea behind the Recycling and Waste Diversion Fund is straightforward: by increasing the dumping charge on solid waste entering Michigan landfills — including increasing the charge on the 6 million tons of Canadian and out-of-state trash we’re estimated to take in this year — we could provide state funding for local-based recycling efforts. Furthermore, because the cost of an increase in the dumping charge would cost the average Michigan family just a dollar a month (compared to the $29 annual charge approved by 54% of Leelanau County voters in August), local people would save money.

So here’s the deal: more recycling, less Canadian and out-of-state trash, and lower costs to local familes. So why the delay?