A resident of the City of Reading (the "City") claimed that the City's recycling ordinance was preempted by the Pennsylvania Solid Waste Management Act (the "Act"), 35 P.S. § § 6018.101 et seq., as applied to the resident because he operated a solid waste hauling business. Although the resident failed to file a post-trial motion to preserve the issue for appeal, Berks County Court of Common Pleas Judge Jeffrey K. Sprecher nonetheless granted the resident the opportunity to be heard, and analyzed the potential preemption of the City's recycling ordinance.
The resident argued that the Act sets forth a framework for municipal regulation of waste management and regulation, and cited Pa. Independent Waste Haulers Ass'n v. Northumberland, 885 A.2d 1106 (Pa. Commw. Ct. 2005) for the proposition that the Act preempts a municipality, such as the City, from imposing recycling fees on him as a waste hauler.
Judge Sprecher explained that the Act only preempts municipal authorities from imposing administrative fees that applied solely to waste haulers. Because the City's recycling ordinance was applied to the resident based on his ownership of real estate within the City, the fact that he operated a waste hauling business from that particular property had no relevance under the ordinance. Therefore, Judge Sprecher concluded, the City's ordinance is not pre-empted by the Act because municipalities are authorized to charge a fee for the collection of recyclable materials upon private property, even if the recycling services of the municipality are not used by that property.
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