Opinion ID: 3009773
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: the response

Text: Until the Tax Reform Act of 1986 repealed many of the tax incentives, most waste disposal facilities were privately owned and operated. ID. at  [n.36]. In response to the tax changes and increased costs caused by environmental regulation, increased public ownership became necessary, shifting the financing burden to the local governments. With this burden came risk. Even where the municipal government contracts with a private operator to construct or upgrade the disposal facility, the municipality often continues to bear the risk of an inadequate waste supply through municipal guarantees. Consequently, it is the ability of local governments to control these haulers and where they transport the collected waste that often determines the feasibility of the solid waste processing disposal programs. See Petersen & Abramowitz, 22 FORDHAM URB. L.J. at  [n.31]. Flow control ordinances, enacted by a number of states attempting to deal with these waste disposal crises, create a system in which waste haulers are licensed by the municipality and are directed to take the waste collected to landfills that have been designated by the county. By conditioning the haulers' licenses on their compliance, local governments can assure a certain minimum revenue at the designated sites. Flow control 7 both guarantees that a certain volume will be deposited and enables the operators of the designated landfill to collect a tipping fee0 high enough to cover the cost of processing. Indeed, tipping fees are typically based on both the system's construction cost and the estimated amount of waste that will be deposited there annually. In some cases, the municipalities actually set the tipping fee contractually. Given the municipalities' reliance on the higher rates in effect when the municipalities were constructing and financing these facilities, flow control ordinances have been crucial to the financial viability of these facilities in the wake of the precipitous decline of tipping fees.0 Indeed, flow control has been a vital economic element in supporting dozens of major waste-to-energy and landfill-based waste disposal programs involving billions of dollars in capital investment. Petersen & Abramowitz, 22 FORDHAM URB. L.J. at  [n.25].0 0 The tipping fee is the price charged haulers to dump a ton of waste at a landfill. 0 Although the waste disposal crisis had evidenced an acute shortage of environmentally sound landfill capacity, the market eventually responded to the increased price; in fact, there were so many entrants into the waste disposal market, constructing so many new facilities, that tipping fees collapsed. Thus, while landfills could contract for tipping fees between $35.00 per ton (Mercer County) and $52.00 per ton (Chester County) approximately five years ago, current spot rate tipping fees are approximately $17.50 - $30.00 per ton. 0 Until C & A Carbone, Inc. v. Town of Clarkstown, 114 S.Ct. 1677 (1994), discussed infra, these ordinances had withstood a variety of constitutional challenges, including due process, antitrust, and Commerce Clause challenges. Petersen & Abramowitz, 22 FORDHAM URB. L.J. at -9 [nn.67-110]. Indeed, through the late 1980s, federal courts entertaining Commerce Clause challenges to flow control found that even flow control schemes involving export 8