By JIM FAILE

DARLINGTON – Darlington County will keep its so-called yellow bag program for solid waste disposal, at least for the time being.

A proposed ordinance that would have repealed the portion of the county’s solid waste ordinance that requires the use of the bags for disposal of household garbage in the county’s solid waste system failed to pass on a tied 4 – 4 vote by Darlington County Council Monday.

The ordinance was up for a preliminary vote on second reading. The vote means the measure is dead for the rest of this year and will not make it to third reading.

Council members Bobby Hudson of Lamar, Mozella “Pennie” Nicholson of Hartsville, Dannie Douglas and Chairman Billy Baldwin of Darlington voted to adopt the ordinance. Members Wesley Blackwell of Hartsville, Le Flowers of Darlington, Wilhelmina Johnson of Darlington and Alex “Buz” Shaw of Hartsville voted against approval of the ordinance.

Under council’s rules of procedure, the only way the measure could be resurrected this year would be for one of the council members who voted on the prevailing side – Flowers, Shaw, Johnson or Blackwell - to move to bring it back up for reconsideration, said County Attorney Jim Cox. And that does not appear likely to happen.

“I think the yellow bag program was good at the time when it was first adopted,” said Hudson. “But now, I’m hearing more and more people are having a hard time finding them in stores.”

“I am in favor of keeping the yellow bags,” Blackwell said. “This is a pay-as-you-throw program. I really think that it is equitable. I believe it’s fair. I believe it’s equitable. It helps reduce solid waste, and I think that’s the way to go.”

The pay-as-you-throw program requires consumers to purchase the specially designated plastic yellow trash bags from local retailers. Households that generate more trash end up buying more bags, while those that produce less garbage buy fewer bags. The program is aimed at encouraging recycling and reducing the volume of household trash that goes into landfills. The concept behind it is that the more a household recycles, the fewer bags it will have to buy.

Douglas said the program encourages illegal dumping. He said you don’t have to travel far in Darlington County to find roadside ditches where people have thrown their trash to avoid buying the bags.

“You can’t buy them in Society Hill,” he said. He said the quality of the bags is inferior and they fall apart easily.

“I just don’t understand why we want to put this burden on people,” Douglas said.

County officials said eliminating the program would have resulted in the loss of $290,000 annually in revenue to the county generated through the program.

Johnson said the money paid by consumers to buy the bags represents a user fee based on the volume of garbage a household produces. “With the Darlington County solid waste plan, we have done well,” she said. “We were the first to use the yellow bags, and we are the only one to successfully use the yellow bags. We all trash together.”

Darlington County is the only one of South Carolina’s 46 counties that currently uses the pay-as-you-throw yellow bag system.

Monday’s vote followed a public hearing at which several people urged council to get rid of the yellow bag program.

Lee Graham of Hartsville said the program seems to have two primary reasons for existing – encouraging recycling and generating revenue for the county. “If these are the main reasons, why is Darlington County the only county in South Carolina that uses this program?” he asked.

“I think people recycle because they feel like it’s the right thing to do,” Graham said. He said if money is the issue he would rather see a property tax increase to make up the revenue than to have to continue buying the bags.

In many cases, he said, the bags are difficult to find because retailers sell out of them and shoppers have to go from store to store looking for them.

Beverly Hamlin brought a petition she said was signed by many of her neighbors to eliminate the program. “We in Darlington County need to be a little more innovative when it comes to recycling and attracting industry,” she said. “Darlington needs to grow.”

King Carmen who lives off of U.S. Highway 52 north of Darlington said other people dump significant volumes of garbage on his property frequently to avoid using the yellow bags.

Hartsville Mayor Mel Pennington also asked council to eliminate the program. Hartsville opted out of the program recently, and city residents who use city curbside garbage pickup are no longer required to dispose of their garbage in the yellow bags. Instead, the city pays a tipping fee of $38.50 per ton to the county to haul its garbage to the county’s transfer station where it is compacted and sent by truck to the Lee County Landfill.

City residents who take their garbage to one of the county’s convenience stations, however, are still required to use the bags. Some private commercial haulers who provide residential garbage pickup in the county also pay a tipping fee and do not require the bags.

Pennington said the yellow bag program is neither fair nor equitable. “We decided it was more important to clean up Hartsville,” he said.

He said that since the city opted out of the program and teamed up with Sonoco in a recycling program recycling in the city has increased by 30 percent.

If the county did away with the program, Pennington said, that would allow the city to lower the fees it now charges residential garbage collection customers to cover the county’s tipping fee from $6.50 a month to $2.50 a month.

The only person who spoke in support of keeping the yellow bag program during the public hearing was Councilwoman Johnson.

After the vote, several people in the audience voiced their displeasure. “We’ll just vote y’all out of office,” one man said. Others voiced similar sentiments. “We’re very disappointed,” one woman said.