Published: January 25, 2007 09:29 pm         

Bottle bills shape up for House, Senate

CHARLESTON — Is this the year, under new House leadership, that the beverage container deposit bill doesn’t get bottled up in committee without a hearing?

A longtime supporter, Delegate Ray Canterbury, says he hopes that is the case.

“I’ve been on this bill perhaps three of four times in the past,” Canterbury, R-Greenbrier, said Thursday. “But it’s never been on the agenda. It gets assigned to committee and usually dies in committee. That’s what happens. We have new leadership. We might get a hearing with a new chairman. So it will be interesting.”

The bill’s intent is to affix a 10-cent deposit on all containers — bottle and can — as a means of discouraging highway littering since the fee is redeemable.

Canterbury’s name appeared on a bill that surfaced Thursday on the House list, but Linda Frame, program director for West Virginia Citizen Action Group, emphasized that was merely a holdover from the 2006 session.

A newer version, ironed out during the interims session, is expected to be offered soon by Sen. Brooks McCabe, D-Kanawha, with Delegate Barbara Fleischauer, D-Monongalia, as the lead sponsor in the House.

“We’ve got some problems from last year’s bill, so we can’t run that one,” Frame explained.

In general, Canterbury wholeheartedly supports the concept of the deposit fee, saying it would provide an incentive in diminishing the amount of trash thrown on roadsides.

“People would return the bottle to get their money back and wouldn’t throw them out,” he said.

“If they did throw them out, somebody would pick them up, take them back and redeem the deposit. It would be a way to control litter on the highways.”

Canterbury dismisses criticism that the deposit is a polite word for a tax and says the elderly cannot be used as a reason to oppose the measure.

“I imagine someone would probably help them get to the recycling center,” he said.

“Presumably, if they (seniors) had the Cokes, somebody helped them get to the stores, so I’d say they have some means of redeeming. I don’t think that’s going to be a huge problem.”

Since the deposit can be redeemed, it cannot be considered a tax, Canterbury said.

“You’re not actually forfeiting any money to the government if you bring them back, so there’s no tax involved,” he said.

Litter is a nuisance that is evident across the state, the delegate said, and one case in point is a tract of land he and his father own along the Greenbrier River, just outside Ronceverte.

“People are throwing stuff down and we have to pick it up,” he said. “We have to pick up garbage there about every year. That’s one of the most annoying things in the world, having to pick up after litterbugs.”

— E-mail: mannix@register-herald.com