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Splish, Splash... beverage containers may take a bath

Sewer authorities, water utilities, environmentalists, and others now are pushing for a consumption fee on beverage containers.

Splish splash, beverage containers may be taking a bath in this Congress if clean water advocates have their way. A financial bath, that is.

A large coalition of drinking water and sewer trades, environmental, and other groups are set to promote a bill—as yet lacking a congressional sponsor—that would assess a 5¢ per container “consumption fee” on soft drink, beer, and water containers and bottles.

Most of the major drinks trade associations are unaware that the proposal is bubbling up. “That is news to me,” responds Beau Phillips, spokesman for the Beer Institute, when asked what he knows about the draft consumption fee.

This isn’t your mother’s old “bottle bill” where a consumer “hit” is meant to reduce litter and encourage recycling. Instead, this new push for a bottle bill has a brand-new rationale: to raise money for a new federal trust fund dedicated to construction of drinking water and sewer systems. Those systems, found in most communities in the country, are in many cases old, decrepit, and dilapidated.

Moreover, the federal Clean Water and Drinking State Revolving Funds, which live off annual congressional appropriations, are way too small to finance needed construction. While the gap between needs and expenditures has grown, congressional appropriations to the two revolving funds—which make loans to localities—have remained static or declined.

Jeff More, a lobbyist for the Accord Group, Washington, DC, is heading the coalition of groups currently looking for a sponsor for the draft legislation, the specifics of which he declines to share. However, the draft is based in part on an earlier proposal from the Assn. of Metropolitan Sewerage Agencies (AMSA) that aimed to raise $5 billion for the trust fund, which would coexist with the two State Revolving Funds.

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