Staff and Members Meet With Congressional Offices About Funding and Policy

USCC’s Advocacy Team met with staff from five Congressional offices to continue to highlight infrastructure funding and the need for compost data collection to be removed from Superfund liability that was proposed by the EPA for the small amounts of PFAS present in compost.
 
Staff from Sen. Alex Padilla (D-CA)’s office, Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) listened to composters and others from their district but did not commit on any of the measures yet—the Compost Act and Recycling, PFAS exemption bills and Compost Accountability Act. However, they were very receptive to tours in the Congressional districts to learn more about our industry.  USCC and our members in their district are following up to press for support. 
 
For the Padilla meeting, the team was joined by a number of California members, including Dan Noble of the USCC California Chapter, Neil Edgar, California Compost Coalition, Christine Lenches-Hinckel of 301 Organics, Tim Goncharoff of TAG Consulting, Christy Pestoni of Waste Connections, and Jeff Ziegenbein of Inland Empire compost facility. The Arizona meeting was joined by Chris Seney of Republic’s organics team.

Wyoming’s City of Sheridan member Charles Martineau joined virtually to talk about their compost facility’s ability to save the city significant funds from avoided landfill expansion at the office of Sen. Cynthia Lummis, who put forth a bill exempting compost manufacturers from CERCLA (The Resource Management PFAS Protection from Liability Act).
 
The team also met with staff of Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN), a co-sponsor of the Recycling and Composting Accountability Act, a bipartisan bill which would mandate standardized, federal data collection and planning for composting and recycling initiatives. The group also explored with his staff the idea of a Composting Caucus (Burchett previously owned a compost business), and will continue working on the project. Mounir Mizallen of Eastman, with headquarters in Tennessee, joined the team for that meeting.
 
For PFAS research, the group checked in with staff of Rep James Baird (R-IN) about the possibility of including language for research into plant uptake for PFAS in the Farm Bill.  Mike Johnson of Heartland F/S was prepared to join but the meeting was shortened.
 
All parties said they expected the Farm Bill, which USCC hopes will include provisions of The Compost Act, to be delayed into 2024.
 
USCC hopes to do a member fly in sometime during Fiscal 2024-25, but will continue zoom meetings with member congressional constituents in the mean time. If you wish to join us, reach out to Linda Norris-Waldt, advocacy director, and remember to sign on to the USCC’s Compost Action Center here.
 
Thanks to Noel Lyons of McGill Compost who was on our in-person team, led by Doug Benevento, our lobbyist, with Linda Norris-Waldt and Frank Franciosi, Executive Director of the US Composting Council.