Colorado's New Waste Diversion Venture

              This past year the Colorado General Assembly made a big move to help decrease Coloradoans waste. The 2019 Regular Session passed a bill called the Front Range Waste Diversion Enterprise Grant Program or SB19-192. This bill was signed by Governor Polis in May of 2019. The bill created a new waste diversion grant program that will affect the Front Range communities. These communities include the counties of Adams, Arapahoe, Boulder, Douglas, Elbert, El Paso, Jefferson, Larimer, Pueblo, Teller, and Weld and the cities and counties of Broomfield and Denver. Essentially this new law will create a fee for landfill usage. The fee will take effect in January of 2020 and there will be a board of 13-members that will oversee the grant program. The law creates the “front range waste diversion enterprise” and the enterprise gets to place a fee and collect a user fee on every load of landfill waste in the communities listed above. Then, all the money that the enterprise collects will go towards the fund for the Front Range Waste Diversion Grant Program. Specifically, the fees will begin at 15 cents per cubic yard per load starting in January of 2020 and go through December 2020, then it will go up 15 cents for the next years, then in January of 2023 the fee will change to 60 cents per cubic yard per load, and finally in 2024 the fee will be adjusted for inflation annually. The entities that are available for grants are cities, counties, municipalities, non-profit and for-profit businesses that are apart of waste removal or diversion, and lastly institutions of higher education and public or private schools. The waste diversion goals are set to a “32% diversion by 2021, 39% diversion by 2026, and 51% diversion by 2036” and the enterprise will provide assistance to achieve these waste goals. Overall, these goals are monumental for waste management in this region.  

              The bill was introduced into the Senate of the General Assembly, into the Local Government committee. The main sponsors are Republican Sen. Kevin Priola, Democrat Sen. Faith Winter,

Democrat Rep. Lisa Cutter, and Democrat Rep. Dominique Jackson. The other co-sponsors are mainly representatives and senators of the Democratic party. It appears that more Democrats support this bill than conservatives in the General Assembly. Still, this isn’t to say that Colorado Republicans dislike recycling, but based on support and sponsorship more democrats seemed to promote the bill. This may be due to increasing polarization in our country and that nowadays environmental protections seem to be a policy area that Democrats are very passionate about. In the book, Historical Development of Congress by Adler, Jenkins, and Shipan, many times throughout the book they highlight the extreme and increasing polarization of  the country, so its not wrong to assume this bill may also be a tied into a case of polarization as well. Another reason this bill may have come about is due to Colorado shifting from a Republican majority to a Democratic majority. Author John A. Straayer’s article, “The Colorado General Assembly: It Ain’t What It Used to Be,” states that Colorado’s partisanship has started to shift to a more liberal ideology in the last decade. However, even if more Democrats seemed to sponsor this bill it’s important to remember the incentivized aspect placed into the bill. The ability to gain a grant if waste diversion meets the goals of the enterprise is a portion of the bill that may help everyone collectively support the bill even more.

Nevertheless, in the next month these new fees will be put into place and then we will better be able to tell if this waste diversion bill creates a polarized controversy with the folks on the Front Range. However, for some this new law brings hope. For example, the article from The Colorado Sun titled, “Colorado’s recycling rate improves to 17.2%, but we’re producing more trash than ever” by Tamara Chuang states that on “the average Coloradan generates 5.6 pounds of trash, of which 1.2 pounds is recycled.” The figure below shows the data that Chuang describes. Compared to other states Colorado has much more waste per person and recycles very little. Still, Chuang also highlights that many recycling non-profit groups are feeling more optimistic about Colorado’s future with recycling due to the Front Range Waste Diversion Enterprise Grant Program that could incentivize  less landfill disposal and lead to a higher recycling rate. Overall, time will only tell how this law will affect Colorado’s recycling rate and citizens true feelings on this law.

How much a Coloradan recycles every day

Work Cited:

https://leg.colorado.gov/bills/sb19-192

Adler, E. Scott, et al. The United States Congress. W.W. Norton & Company, 2019.

https://coloradosun.com/2019/11/12/colorados-recycling-rate-improves-to-17-2-but-were-producing-more-trash-than-ever/

Straayer, John A. “The Colorado General Assembly: It Ain’t What it Used to Be.”