By Mar-Vic Cagurangan
Variety News Staff

THE Guam Environmental Protection Agency endorses a legislative proposal to earmark 5 percent of the tipping/user fee collections to the agency’s solid waste management program.
“Guam EPA receives no federal or local funding to support the implementation of mandated solid waste responsibilities,” GEPA administrator Lorilee T. Crisostomo said in supporting Bill 58, which proposes the establishment of two special funds for solid waste operations and management.
The bill, introduced by Sen. James Espaldon, R-Tamuning, would create the Solid Waste Operations Fund to be administered by the Department of Public Works which would get 95 percent of the tipping and user fee collections; and the Solid Waste Management Fund under GEPA, which would receive the remaining 5 percent.
“As the island’s population increases and as long as residents generate solid waste, the workload will not dissipate,” Crisostomo stated in her testimony before Espaldon’s public works committee, which heard the bill Thursday.
Since its creation in 1998, GEPA’s Solid Waste Management Program has never been funded, Crisostomo said,
“Guam EPA’s implementation of the numerous and extensive solid waste mandates have been accomplished through borrowed funding through the federal consolidated grant it receives from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency,” Crisostomo said.
On an annual basis, the Solid Waste Management Program responds to about 230 complaints, processes 40 solid waste management facility permits, and reviews 40 demolition plans.
The law that created the program established 11 positions for full-time employees to handle the workload, but Crisostomo said GEPA can afford to maintain only seven employees at a cost of $314,000 a year.
“The program is constantly challenged to maintain its viability as it continues to lose dedicated personnel due to work overload resulting from lack of resources,” she added.
GEPA currently has only three employees implementing the program. “Despite Guam EPA’s best efforts to share the workload with personnel from different programs within the agency, this arrangement cannot be realistically maintained at a steady state without negatively impacting other mandated responsibilities,” the administrator said.
Without sustainable funding sources to provide the resources needed, Crisostomo warned that the “program’s declining efficiency in protecting our environment from improper solid waste activities will increase.”
She said a small portion of the tipping and use fee collections could at least help GEPA keep its staffing at a workable level.
“Assuming an estimated revenue of $7 million this year from tipping fees, with a 100 percent collection efficiency, Bill 58 will divert only $350,000 to support Guam EPA’s current staffing of 64 percent of the staff approved at the 1998 level,” Crisostomo said.
DPW director Larry Perez said he doesn’t object to sharing a portion of the tipping/user fees with GEPA. “We would like to see this money used primarily for enforcement of regulations, as this is the area for which GEPA needs financial support,” Perez said.