The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, May 2, 2007

MUNICIPALITY BANS CORPORATE WASTE DUMPING

[Rachel's introduction: Another town in Pennsylvania -- Tamaqua -- has passed a local law that offers a direct challenge to corporate power.]

On the evening of May 1st, Borough Council members in Tamaqua, Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania, passed a law declaring that corporations engaged in the storage, "beneficial use," or disposal of a host of dangerous waste materials possess no constitutional "rights" within the Borough.

The "Tamaqua Borough Corporate Waste and Local Control Ordinance" also...

(1) prohibits persons from using corporations to engage in the storage, "beneficial use" or disposal of hazardous waste, coal ash, residual waste or materials derived from residual waste, dredged material, PCB-containing waste, radioactive material, construction and demolition (C&D) waste, chemotherapeutic waste, and infectious waste;

(2) reaffirms that ecosystems in their community possess enforceable rights -- Tamaqua was the first community in the nation to legally recognize these rights, in an Ordinance passed on September 19th, 2006;

(3) asserts that corporations doing business in Tamaqua will now be treated as "state actors" under the law, and thus, be required to respect the rights of people and natural communities within the Borough; and

(4) expands the conditions under which Tamaqua residents can sue to enforce not only their rights, but also the rights of Nature.

The Borough Council also declared that attempts by state agencies, federal agencies, or corporate managers to invalidate the Ordinance would result in a Boroughwide public meeting to determine additional steps to expand local control and self-government in the Borough.

Work on the Ordinance began more than a year ago, sparked by community concern over a proposal by the Lehigh Coal & Navigation Corporation (LC&N), and supported by state and federal agencies, to use a smorgasbord of waste materials for "mine reclamation" of the 3,600-ft. long and 1,800-ft. wide Springdale Pit straddling the mountains between Tamaqua and Coaldale Boroughs. New Jersey and Pennsylvania lawmakers were eyeing the huge strip mine, created over many decades of anthracite coal mining by LC&N, as a dumping ground for material to be dredged from the bottom of the Hudson and Delaware rivers to deepen shipping channels for international corporations.

Community opposition ran deeper, with the one thousand member Army for a Clean Environment (ACE), headed by Dr. Dante Picciano, pushing local officials to move from the side of the corporation to the defense of the community. In the lead-up to the disposal plan, LC&N representatives had secured an agreement with the Tamaqua Borough Council to accept 700,000 tons of river dredge in exchange for a tipping fee of $1.00 per ton to be paid to the Borough. But in September of 2006, at a crucial point in the permitting process, corporate representatives asked the Borough Council to make its support for the dredge dumping known to the Department of Environmental Protection. In the face of overwhelming community outrage, Council members not only refused, but instead rescinded, by 4-3 vote, the tipping fee agreement. Opponents of the agreement referred to the tipping fee as "blood money."

With passage of the "Tamaqua Borough Corporate Waste and Local Control Ordinance," community citizens have taken another step toward harnessing their local government to community needs. The vote on the seven member Council was 3-3, with one member absent, but Mayor Chris Morrison broke the tie, voting in favor of the new law.

"I know we'll be challenged on this," said Morrison. "And we welcome that. It's a hard vote when you know you're going to be challenged, and you possibly could go to court and be sued over this, but when you say you're going to do everything you can to protect your community, that means everything you can."

Ben Price, Projects Director for the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, the organization that assisted with the drafting of the Ordinance, said, "Following only months on the heels of their groundbreaking Ordinance that bans corporations from land-applying sewage sludge, this new law puts Tamaqua on the map again. This was the first community in the United States to recognize the rights of nature, and now it's the first community in the United States to ban corporate waste dumping. It's rare for a local government to stand on the shoulders of a grassroots effort and elevate the law to its proper status, where it legitimately represents and enforces the will of the people to protect their families and environment from corporate usurpations."

In the coming months, other municipalities are expected to adopt similar laws that assert the governing decisions made by local majorities. Municipalities across Pennsylvania, and in other states, are considering similar ways to equip their citizens with self- governing authority to stop corporate assaults engineered by a handful of corporate officers, and enabled by State permitting agencies.

The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, located in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, has worked with communities resisting corporate assaults upon democratic self-governance since 1995. Among other programs, it has brought Daniel Pennock Democracy Schools to communities in Pennsylvania and twenty-five other states where people seek to end destructive corporate investments and projects routinely permitted by state and federal agencies. Over one hundred Pennsylvania municipalities have adopted ordinances authored by the Legal Defense Fund.