New York Town Exhumes Flow Control

Date: December 16, 2008

Source: News Room

The Town of North Hempstead, NY on Long Island has approved the reinstatement of a waste flow control law. Reinstituting flow control will allow the town to mandate that all waste collected within its jurisdiction, including its 30 villages, go through its transfer station in Port Washington. The law is to take effect in 2010, when current contracts with waste haulers expire. The decision to reinstate flow control comes by way of the US Supreme Court's decision last year in United Haulers v. Oneida-Herkimer, in which the court held that municipalities can compel haulers to use publicly financed waste facilities. Until then, flow control had been deemed unconstitutional by the high court's ruling on Carbone v. Clarkstown, NY in 1994. The waste industry, including the NSWMA, have argued for years that flow control inevitably leads to higher costs in the absence of competition.

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