Why wait for the state?
Mono County pursues local plastic bag ban in spite of pending state ban.
Time to stock up on bathroom trash can-sized liners (if you can find them), because the state, the Town of Mammoth Lakes and now the county are all considering a ban on plastic bags.
Actually the state already has Senate Bill 270, which would have banned bags as of July 1, 2015 but a referendum to repeal the bill will go before voters during the presidential election in November 2016. The statewide ban would be the first of its kind in the country.
Mono County Supervisors discussed the possibility of doing away with the non-decomposable white ghosts at Tuesday’s meeting, but a county-wide ban might be a moot point. If California voters vote down the repeal, the state’s initiative would trump local laws. Supervisors jumped on the band wagon anyway and are moving forward. The Board’s consensus was to follow the state’s law and not the Town’s ordinance.
Fesko was the dissenting vote, stating that he thought the ordinance would be a waste of time, considering the issue would come before voters in the state. Supervisor Larry Johnston was hoping the county would follow the Town’s much stricter law.
Mammoth has drafted an ordinance that would ban the bags everywhere, not just at the large grocery stores, convenience stores with liquor licenses, and pharmacies the state’s bill would require. The Town ordinance will go into effect, should the statewide ban be voted down.
Mono County Solid Waste Superintendent Tony Dublino was asked by members of the Board to bring the issue forward. Johnston said the “Wild by Nature” county has been considering the idea of banning plastic bags in for more than a decade.
Solid Waste Task Force has been seeing the idea of banning bags fly through the air or get stuck to the chain link fence at the Mono County’s Benton Crossing Landfill dump since 2012, Dublino explained. The bags top the list of things that have to get picked up at the dump. But a county ordinance would do little to stop the bag problem if the Town, the biggest consumer and distributor of single-use plastic bags in the county, doesn’t ban the bags as well.
Banning bags is not welcome by local businesses, Dublino explained. He told the Board, “There was not much support even from the folks I expected to support it.”
Some Mono County businesses owners said they were afraid that charging customers for bags wouldn’t be good for business. Others were afraid that the blight of plastic bags would only be replaced by the litter some people fill those bags with. The bags make great trash receptacles (one of many uses), but if the bags are banned, their concern is that the little bits of trash will fly all over instead of being contained in the bag.
