On the surface, user fees brought in by government make so much sense but once implemented, they often create a big mess.
The West Lake Community Association has spent the last two weeks cleaning up one of those big messes along the Dayton and Jeanie forest service roads. For the third time in five years, community volunteers have had to pick up everything from household trash to home appliances and construction materials. One volunteer said 31 washers and dryers have been picked up so far.
This is a story heard in one form or another, to varying degrees, in rural areas surrounding Prince George, particularly during the spring and summer months. For some, the Foothills landfill is seen as either too far away, its hours of operation too inconvenient or the tipping fees too high to warrant bringing garbage there. Instead, plenty of trash, including hazardous waste in the form of chemicals and other toxic materials, is dumped in the bush or on the side of a forestry road.
The recent increase in tipping fees by the Regional District of Fraser Fort-George, along with more planned rate hikes, will only make matters worse. The landfill fees for more than 100 kilograms of trash is now $62 per tonne, up $5 from last year. Further increases will drive the cost up to $90 per tonne by 2019.
No one likes to pay a penalty for doing the right thing, which is exactly what charging tipping fees to residents represents. Charging waste removal companies to bring dumpsters collected from local businesses to the landfill is appropriate but charging residents to get rid of drywall, pieces of lumber and other materials from a home renovation project isn't a fee, it's a fine.
The argument is that landfill fees encourage residents to recycle more and to use and dispose less but that argument is flawed. When asked, more and more people recycle more and more because it's a sign of responsible behaviour that's good for the environment. Good luck finding someone who says they recycle or generate less garbage because of rising tipping fees at their local landfill.
What landfill fees do, however, is encourage people to dump their garbage in some out of the way location where they won't be seen. It's easy to measure that through the increased amounts of waste being illegally dumped and the rising number of efforts needed by groups like the West Lake Community Association to clean up the growing mess. The cause-and-effect link between rising tipping fees and more garbage dumped in rural areas seems clear.
City councillor Brian Skakun called tipping fees "a bit of a vicious cycle" during a February regional district meeting. As local and regional governments encourage waste reduction and environmental stewardship on one hand, the fingers of the other hand plucks cash out of the wallet of residents for responsibly disposing of personal household waste.
Landfill costs would be better covered through general taxes, rather than user fees. It would avoid the opposing messages of responsible waste disposal and here's the cost to do so, while also eliminating the need of landfill site staff to handle money. Instead, those employees could spend more time engaging with residents ("hey, does that fridge still work? Did you know B.C. Hydro might pay you $30 for that fridge and even pick it up for you? Here's their number. Give them a call.")
Some user fees make sense to recover all or part of the operating costs (building permits and admission to the pool, for example) but far too often they are applied across the board by civic leaders looking to lower taxes for political gain. There is no real savings for residents and, all too frequently, it's done to mask a significant increase in what residents are paying for local government services.
Taxation that goes by another name and is collected in another form is still taxation.
All residents should share the cost of household waste disposal and then share in the benefit of rural areas around Prince George that aren't covered in garbage.
