Massachusetts Fines City for Tossing Recyclables

If anyone knows how to separate green glass from brown, rinse and crush an empty 7-Up can, or tie a bundle of newspapers, it's a resident of Wayland, where the percent of people who recycle is among the highest in the state.

 But a settlement announced yesterday by the state attorney general's office calls Wayland's reputation into question. The town, according to the state's precedent-setting settlement agreement, violated state environmental law by burying plastic bottles instead of recycling them.

Under the settlement, Wayland, long a recycling role model to its peers, agreed to pay a $25,000 civil penalty, $10,000 of which will be waived provided the town doesn't violate the regulations again within the next two years.

The case, which began in 1999 when the state Environmental Strike Force followed up on tips it received about recyclables being buried in the town landfill, has implications beyond Wayland, according to the attorney general's office and state environmental officials.

''It's important for people in all the towns to be aware of the problem of diminishing capacity for trash and to take recycling seriously,'' said Edward Bohlen, an assistant attorney general who worked on the case. ''The goal of higher recycling was part of the goal of the Commonwealth, and this enforcement action is part of achieving that goal.''

The attorney general's unusual foray into recycling enforcement comes under the aegis of the state's Solid Waste Disposal Act, which prohibits certain materials from being dumped in landfills. Photographs from the surprise inspection in December 1999 show dozens of plastic bottles thrown on the trash heap.

Though Wayland officials said they agreed to the settlement only to avoid a prolonged legal battle, they maintain that the town did nothing wrong. The plastic containers in question, they say, were thought to be contaminated, so employees threw them out.

''We in Wayland take recycling very seriously, and I think the staff at the landfill does as well. We certainly would not do anything blatant,'' said Board of Selectmen chairwoman Mary Antes. ''It's hard to live with a shadow hanging over you like that, particularly when you don't understand it.''

Antes pointed out that no criminal indictments resulted from a grand jury that was convened to investigate. To the town, the time and energy the attorney general's office spent on the case supersede the offense.

''If they just had a wanton disregard over a sustained period of time, they would have been out of space a long time ago,'' said the town's attorney, Lauren Stiller Rikleen.

Charles Kiley, the superintendent of the landfill, was out of town and unavailable for comment yesterday.

Environmentalists believe the settlement sends a crucial message: The state is serious about pursuing recycling violators. As the remaining landfill space in the state diminishes, they say, recycling is not only critical, it's mandatory.

''The great thing about what happened in Wayland is there does need to be some enforcement going on in terms of recycling going into landfills,'' said Iris Vicencio-Garaygay, an environmental advocate for the Massachusetts Public Interest Research Group. ''What's unfortunate about this is that it might confirm some peoples' fears. But if the attorney general's office is taking action against it, and the potential exists for more enforcement action to happen, that can only be a good thing.''

Enforcement is a certainty from now on, said Edmund Coletta, a spokesman for the state Department of Environmental Protection. As the state moves toward its goal of recycling 70 percent of its solid waste by 2010, he said, environmental officials are becoming more aggressive about targeting violators like Wayland.

''We're kind of turning up the temperature on the solid waste ban issue,'' Coletta said. ''It's just unacceptable conduct to take this type of stuff that has already been separated by a homeowner and put it back into a solid waste landfill.''

Asked whether similar investigations around the state are forthcoming, he said there's ''no question about it.'' – Boston Globe