Published: January 19, 2007 11:29 pm         

Bottle bill sponsor remains hopeful

CHARLESTON — A renewed effort to stick a 10-cent deposit on all beverage containers as a means of diminishing littering along West Virginia’s highways should be in printed form next week.

Its intent is to allow consumers to redeem the full deposit, hopefully to discourage litterbugs from tossing cans and bottles out of vehicle windows.

“It’s a process where the retailers are not responsible for the collection,” the lead sponsor, Sen. Brooks McCabe, D-Kanawha, said Friday.

“We tried to make it as user-friendly as possible and provide a financial incentive for the collection centers. We hope the county solid waste organizations will take a look at this. We’ve got to work it through the process. We want to sit down with retailers and try to deal with any of the rough edges.”

Already, the proposal has come under fire within the business community.

Kevin Dietly of Northbridge, an environmental consulting firm in Westford, Maine, says the program could wind up in the red if too many people begin turning in cans and bottles, since the measure provides a full return of the deposit and 3 cents on each container is dedicated to recycling centers.

If more than 77 percent of the containers are returned, Dietly maintains, the fund goes broke.

McCabe agreed the point is a valid one, but said adjustments can be made.

“We’re looking at trying to have a control feature in there that would allow the Department of Environmental Protection to make some adjustments if we would get close to that being a problem,” the senator said.

“If there was so much usage, they (centers) would get less per container but would be getting more dollars because of the increased volume.”

McCabe said he was confident the matter could be dealt with if it surfaced.

“We don’t see that as a problem in the near term at all,” he said.

“I think the bigger problem is getting the retailers comfortable with it.”

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The Senate read for the first time several bills originating in the Senate Judiciary Committee, including one that would impose a $10,000 fine for selling an excessive amount of iodine matrix — an ingredient in the recipe for illegal methamphetamine.

Lawmakers two years ago enacted legislation that prevented the sale of certain cold and sinus medications once purchased in massive volumes to sustain meth labs.

A State Police official, Lt. Mike Goff, said this week the new law had proved to be effective in eliminating a number of meth production sites in West Virginia.

— E-mail:

mannix@register-herald.com