Reliance on landfills threatens human health by impairing air and water quality.
landfills are the number one source of human-made methane, a critical greenhouse gas, as well as the source of "leachate," a toxic liquid that will eventually seep into the groundwater under every landfill ever built. Leaky landfills contaminate air and drinking water supplies with pollutants like cyanide, mercury, dioxins and lead. Even today's "engineered" landfills have an 82 percent failure rate, posing a permanent threat to our ground water supplies.

Wisconsin's influx of out-of-state waste is not likely to diminish in the future without an increased tipping fee.
Private trash haulers have ramped up capacity by more than 64 million tons as of January 2005 in anticipation of even greater volumes of out-of-state waste coming into Wisconsin landfills. Minnesota, for example, expects their own waste volumes to double from 5.9 million tons to 9.1 million tons in the next ten years. With few new landfills or expansions being approved in Minnesota, most of that additional waste will likely find its way into Wisconsin landfills. Illinois is also facing a landfill capacity crisis, with skyrocketing land values and strong community opposition for new landfill construction, which will place added pressure on Wisconsin's landfill capacity.

Increased tipping fees will reduce out-of-state waste
Importing municipal waste into Wisconsin is a bargain at present due to a combination of low tipping fees and plentiful landfill capacity. This effectively allows neighboring states to "offload" the environmental and financial liabilities of waste management, including some of their dirtiest waste, on Wisconsin communities. A more competitive tipping fee for waste disposal is the only constitutionally viable option left to counter an increasing flow of waste from neighboring states. According to a recent UW-Green Bay study, an increase in the tipping fee to $10 per ton ($7 more than the current fee) could provide a 50 percent reduction in out-of-state waste disposal. The increase would make Wisconsin's tipping fee more competitive to other states, such as Minnesota ($13/ton), eliminating the economic incentive for haulers to truck waste here.

Increased tipping fees will provide tax relief for Wisconsin citizens and growth for the state's economy
Currently, taxpayers are paying for nearly 72 percent of recycling programs through property taxes. A tipping fee increase from $3 to $10 on each ton of waste will generate an additional $44-54 million in revenue. Nearly all of that additional revenue would go right back to local communities, fully funding local recycling programs that are currently being subsidized by property taxes. The tipping fee increase will reward communities that actively implement robust, innovative recycling programs and businesses with tax enterprises. It will also protect taxpayers from the looming costs attributed with cleaning up landfills in the years ahead.