"The current system punishes communities which make the investment in creating landfills, only to have them filled by states which refuse to adequately address their waste issues"
About this Quote
Gillmor’s line isn’t really about trash. It’s about federalism, blame, and the political optics of being the place where everyone else’s mess ends up.
The phrasing is calibrated for a lawmaker’s audience: “current system” signals bureaucracy and structural failure rather than personal grievance, while “punishes communities” casts landfill-host towns as civic-minded victims. That’s a strategic inversion. Landfills are typically framed as nuisances imposed on reluctant locals; Gillmor flips the script and calls them “investment,” borrowing the language of economic development to dignify what is usually treated as a necessary evil. The payoff is moral leverage: if a community took on the burden, it deserves protection, not exploitation.
The real target is interstate waste shipment - a recurring flashpoint in the 1990s and 2000s as some states exported garbage to others with available capacity and looser restrictions. “States which refuse” is pointed: it implies laziness or political cowardice, not simply a shortage of space. The subtext is an argument for either federal limits on imported waste, stricter fees, or rules that force states to internalize the cost of their consumption.
It also telegraphs NIMBY politics without saying NIMBY. Gillmor offers a cleaner villain than “people who don’t want a dump nearby”: out-of-state governments “refusing” responsibility. The quote works because it turns a local environmental headache into an ethics claim about reciprocity - you generate it, you should deal with it - and because it frames regulation not as anti-market, but as pro-fairness for the communities that already did the hard, unpopular work.
The phrasing is calibrated for a lawmaker’s audience: “current system” signals bureaucracy and structural failure rather than personal grievance, while “punishes communities” casts landfill-host towns as civic-minded victims. That’s a strategic inversion. Landfills are typically framed as nuisances imposed on reluctant locals; Gillmor flips the script and calls them “investment,” borrowing the language of economic development to dignify what is usually treated as a necessary evil. The payoff is moral leverage: if a community took on the burden, it deserves protection, not exploitation.
The real target is interstate waste shipment - a recurring flashpoint in the 1990s and 2000s as some states exported garbage to others with available capacity and looser restrictions. “States which refuse” is pointed: it implies laziness or political cowardice, not simply a shortage of space. The subtext is an argument for either federal limits on imported waste, stricter fees, or rules that force states to internalize the cost of their consumption.
It also telegraphs NIMBY politics without saying NIMBY. Gillmor offers a cleaner villain than “people who don’t want a dump nearby”: out-of-state governments “refusing” responsibility. The quote works because it turns a local environmental headache into an ethics claim about reciprocity - you generate it, you should deal with it - and because it frames regulation not as anti-market, but as pro-fairness for the communities that already did the hard, unpopular work.
Quote Details
| Topic | Justice |
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