By JIM FAILE
DARLINGTON - Darlington County Council took a major step toward eliminating the county’s controversial yellow bag solid waste program Monday with the preliminary approval of an ordinance to do away with the program.

By a 5 – 3 vote on second reading, council approved an ordinance repealing the provision of the county’s solid waste ordinance requiring the use of the specially designated yellow bags for disposal of household garbage in the county’s solid waste system.

Chairman Billy Baldwin of Darlington joined members Bobby Hudson of Lamar, Mozella “Pennie” Nicholson of Hartsville, Dannie Douglas of Society Hill and Wilhelmina Johnson of Darlington in voting to get rid of the bag program. Members Wesley Blackwell of Hartsville, Le Flowers of Darlington and Alex “Buz” Shaw of Hartsville voted to defeat the ordinance and keep the yellow bag program in place.

Along with that ordinance, council also approved on second reading an ordinance to raise the annual recycling/solid waste service fee charge levied on all households in the county from its current $35 as a means of replacing the estimated $290,000 a year in revenue the county expects to lose when the yellow bag program is gone.

Officials anticipate an increase in that fee of from $10 to $12, according to Darlington County Administrator Dale Surrett.

That measure passed 7 – 1, with Flowers casting the only no vote.

Flowers said the fee increase is unfair because it does not take into account the volume of garbage generated by a household. “You’ve got single family households with one person living in the house paying the same fee as a household with 15 people living in the house,” he said.

He said the way the ordinance is written, there is no alternative to the fee increase. He suggested a per capita fee as one possible alternative.

Surrett said most South Carolina counties use a combination of means to cover solid waste costs, including tipping fees, property taxes, household fees and business fees with some of the business fees based on the class of business or the volume of waste generated.

He said that while a business fee or some variation on the household fee might be possible, a per capita fee would be difficult to calculate and collect. The county cannot raise property taxes any more this year because it raised them as much as allowable by the state when it adopted its 2011 - 2012 budget in June.

Hudson said every household he knows of in the county spends more than $11 a year buying the yellow bags and said the elimination of the bags even with the fee increase will save them money.

Flowers said that his household, his parents’ household, the uncle’s household all recycle and spend a total of about $52 a year on waste disposal. With the fee increase, that cost will go to nearly $200 a year, he said. “There is no more reason for me to recycle at this point,” he said.

“Why make the people who are single family homeowners pay for every bit of the trash?” Flowers asked.

“I think we’re going to see a big increase in solid waste,” Blackwell said. “I think we’re going to see more solid waste coming into Darlington County from people in other counties that charge more.”

But Douglas said people in the county are burning their household garbage or dumping it illegally in roadside ditches, in wooded areas and on other people’s property now to avoid buying the yellow bags. “That’s what we want to stop,” he said.

Nicholson said people are putting anything they want in the yellow bags now.

The pay-as-you-throw yellow bag program, which has been in place since the mid 1990s, requires consumers to purchase specially designated yellow plastic trash bags to dispose of household garbage in the county’s solid waste system. The program is aimed at encouraging recycling with the idea that the more a household recycles the fewer yellow bags it will have to buy.

Private commercial garbage haulers operating in the county do not require the use of the bags by their customers. They pay a tipping fee to the county instead to dispose of waste at the county’s transfer station, where the garbage is processed for delivery and disposal in the Lee County landfill.

The City of Hartsville, which opted out of the county’s yellow bag program in June under a new recycling program, also pays the same commercial tipping fee.

Council will have to decide at third reading how much the fee will increase, Surrett said. That is so county officials will have time to add the fee to the county property tax notices that will go out to property owners in November.

Council will hold public hearings on the two ordinances when they come up for a final vote on third reading next Monday at 6 p.m. during another special meeting.

In August, a tied 4 – 4 vote resulted in the failure of an ordinance to eliminate the yellow bags to pass. In September, Johnson, who had originally voted to keep the program, announced that she had changed her position and would vote to get rid of the yellow bags. That resulted in the measure being brought back up for reconsideration.

In other business, council gave swift and unanimous second-reading approval to a reapportionment ordinance that adopts a new election plan for county council districts based on the 2010 U.S. Census figures for Darlington County.

The new plan, which was drawn up by the Office of Research and Statistics of the State Budget and Control Board, reflects only minor changes to boundary lines for the eight single-member districts. The same district lines also serve as the district lines for Darlington County Board of Education single-member districts.

Bobby Bowers, director of the Office of Research and Statistics, told council in September when he presented the plan that it protects all three existing minority districts and meets all other U.S. Department of Justice criteria. Justice Department approval is required for the plan to be implemented.

The Justice Department will have 60 days to consider the plan for preclearance once the plan is submitted.

The reapportionment ordinance, too, is scheduled for a public hearing and final vote on third reading during next Monday’s special meeting.