Adrian Dunn speaks to the Board of Selectmen about proposed bylaws planning plastic bags and rigid foam containers.

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — Environmental activists have one word for voters at this year's annual town meeting: plastics.

 

But they don't see a future for the petroleum-based material — particularly in the form of single-use plastic bags and foam and rigid polystyrene food containers.

 

Two citizen petitions will appear on the May 19 warrant seeking the prohibition of the offending materials in the Village Beautiful.

 

The first, Article 42, seeks to "regulate the use of plastic carryout bags and paper carryout bags within the Town and to promote the use of reusable bags." It sets standards for an acceptable reusable bag, requires retail establishments to charge customers 10 cents per recyclable plastic bag and enacts penalties of up $200 for violations of the new bylaw.

 

Article 43 takes aim at foam and rigid polystyrene in takeout food containers and requires "the use and distribution of biodegradable, compostable, reusable, or recyclable products or materials in its place."

 

On Monday, the two articles sparked a lengthy discussion at the Board of Selectmen meeting. The panel was conducting a review of all 44 warrant articles and making advisory votes to Town Meeting.

 

Nearly all of the articles — most of which were previously discussed at length by the board — were recommended for approval by a unanimous vote of the four Selectmen present.

 

The plastic bag and foam container bylaw proposals gave the selectmen pause.

 

Each of the board's members in attendance went to great lengths to say they agreed with the spirit of the proposals, but instead of recommending adoption, they voted to put the following language on the published warrant:

 

"We, the Board of Selectmen, wholeheartedly endorse the goal and intent of Article 42. We believe that the implementation needs to be reviewed and improved. We prefer to table the article and spend the next year shaping the implementation under the Board of Selectmen's leadership in partnership with various segments of the community and with full consideration of the discussion of town meeting."

 

Several of the selectmen appeared to struggle with the decision not to recommend approval of the bylaw. Ultimately, it came down to a desire to see the proposal follow a more traditional path through town committees that then can make a similar proposal to a future town meeting.

 

"The primary issue here is the intentions are good here, but we're not voting whether to approve the intentions, we're voting whether to approve the bylaw," Selectmen Hugh Daley explained to advocates who attended Monday's meeting. "It hasn't gone through a public open meeting process. It hasn't gone through the regular process we have for zoning bylaws.

 

"We have to separate the goal from the letter of the law. ... You can be for a bag ban and not think this law is not correctly worded to achieve that end. My position is the selectmen can take on the job of legislating this through the normal legislative process if we choose to do that."

 

In an email to the board the day after the meeting, organizer Brad Verter said his group is confident in the language used in the proposed bylaw because "virtually every line in this bylaw is taken from laws passed in Massachusetts or elsewhere."

 

But at Monday's meeting — which Verter did not attend — the Selectmen found several specific aspects of the proposals that they thought required further study and/or review from town counsel.

 

The most substantive concern expressed by the board at Monday's meeting dealt with the proposed bylaws' enforcement provisions.

 

Each reads, in part, "Whoever, himself or by his servant or agent or as the servant or agent of any other person or firm or corporation, violates any of the provisions of these regulations may be penalized by a non-criminal disposition process as provided in [Massachusetts General Law] c. 40, Section 21D."

 

Daley called attention to that provision.

 

"What that means is the cashier could be held liable for the violation, so the fine, which we assume would apply to the owner of the establishment, could be on the employee," Daley said. "It's not specific here. That's obviously unfair, right? It's not your intention, right?"

 

Residents Jeanne Marklin, Adrian Dunn and Shira Wohlberg, who appeared on behalf of the petitioners, did not address Daley's specific concern, but they pointed to successful bylaws and ordinances in Great Barrington, other parts of the country and around the world that have addressed the problem of single-use bags that require "substantial energy consumption and [contribute] to greenhouse gases and other adverse environmental effects," as the proposed bylaw reads.

 

"We are hoping to ban plastic bags that are used once and usually thrown out, or people think they are recycling them but they just get made into smaller pieces of plastic," Marklin said. "They never turn into something you can put in the ground and compost. They just contribute to trash on the ground."

 

Chairman Ronald Turbin at one point called the plastic bags "sinful." Sheldon said, "my antipathy for plastic bags is beyond description."

 

"I like the fact that someone has taken the initiative to do something about this," Sheldon continued. "I agree there are potential problems with this exact implementation. I welcome the concept, but I'm troubled over implementation details."

 

Selectman Andrew Hogeland was the first to mention the idea of "tabling" the bylaw.

 

"There are a few things I'd like to remove from this and then I could vote for this," said Hogeland, like Turbin, an attorney. "The other option I could see is moving to table this so we could take a year to do it better."

 

The selectmen did vote 4-0 to recommend adoption of a third citizen-sponsored, environmentally motivated warrant article. Article 44  declares that the people of Williamstown "stand in opposition to the Kinder Morgan Northeast Energy Direct [natural gas] Pipeline."