Members of the Logan City Council voted Tuesday to replace their controversial plastic bag ban with a comprehensive countywide plastic waste management plan.

LOGAN – After two years of debate, the members of the Logan City Council voted Tuesday to repeal their much-delayed prohibition on the distribution of disposable plastic bags.

After multiple delays, Municipal Code Chapter 8.36 was scheduled to go into effect on Jan. 1, 2022. But city Ordinance 21-23 revoking that code was approved by a three-to-two vote of the council members.

Voting in favor of the repeal were council members Mark A. Anderson, Amy Z. Anderson and Thomas C. Jensen, while their colleagues Ernesto López and Jeanne F. Simmonds voted “Nay.”

In lieu of the proposed bag ban, the city council members are now unanimously endorsing the so-called Cache County Plastic Waste Management Program.

That plan was jointly developed by members of the county Solid Waste Advisory Board, the Logan City Environmental Department and the Bear River Health Department, according to Issa Hamud, the city’s environmental director.

Resolution 21-55, which was unanimously approved by the city council on Tuesday, supports the countywide plastic management program and “recognizes the need to gradually educate the public on the proper management of this special waste at the pre-consumer and post-consumer levels.”

Hamud explained that, at the pre-consumer level, business owners will have two options to reduce plastic pollution.

The first of those options will be for businesses to implement recycling of plastic bags and film at their own locations and provide quarterly reports to the city environmental department.

The second option will involve improved containment of plastic waste. Businesses will be required to bundle bags sufficiently before being disposed of so that plastic waste cannot be blown about at the landfill, transit station or from trucks.

At post-consumer level, retailers will have the option to eliminate free single-use plastic bags or implement an improved recycling program.

Another option will be for retailers to provide to shoppers with plastic bags only if customers are charged $.10 per bag.

Hamud added that Cache County businesses that do not implement these plastic waste management options “will be charged a special handling fee of $17.50 per ton for the waste they generate over their existing garbage rates…after one written warning.”

The now-repealed bag ban was originally enacted by the Logan City Council in December of 2019 in response to concerns about plastic waste being blown out of the North Valley Landfill in Clarkston.

That municipal code item would only have impacted retailers within Logan’s city limits and members of the business community expressed concern that the ban should be countywide.

The ban was scheduled to go into effect in April of 2020, after a three-month delay to give retailers time to adjust to that change.

But the effective date of plastic bag ban was eventually delayed several times as a public health measure because single-use bags were considered safer in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic.

The approved text of City of Logan Resolution 21-55 affirms that the Logan City Council supports the countywide Plastic Waste Management Program and directs the city Environmental Department to immediately move forward with its uniform and equitable implementation.



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