By QUINTON SMITH/YachatsNews.com
The Yachats City Council in May will begin working on an ordinance that could prohibit single-use plastic bags and possibly plastic containers in the city.
Council members discussed their views on plastics during their meeting Wednesday, and agreed to begin working on an ordinance for Yachats should the Oregon Legislature adjourn in July without creating a statewide rule.
But the biggest decision is whether Yachats will deal with just single-use plastic bags or expand its ordinance to other uses like straws and restaurant take-out containers.
There are several proposals in the 2019 Legislature dealing with single-use plastic and it is uncertain whether any – or some combination of them — will be approved. In the meantime, more than a dozen Oregon cities – including Newport — have gone ahead with their own versions of bans or proposed bans on plastic grocery bags to straws to single-use food containers.
Councilor James Kerti, who has been researching ordinances, and James Tooke offered to work during the next month to bring a proposal to the council in May.
“A lot of cities around Oregon and the nation are looking at the same thing,” Kerti told YachatsNews.com. “It’s an opportunity to leverage all the work the others around the country are doing.”
Kerti said there seems to be agreement that single-use plastic bags would be banned.
“As for other plastics, we will sit down and look at the different options available to us before deciding how to move forward as a Council,” he told YachatsNews.com. “Creating policy around this topic comes with a lot of complexity and we want to be sure that we do the work necessary to get it right.”
The City Council generally discussed the issue last year, but decided to put off any work on it because staff had more pressing issues. Kerti and Tooke said Wednesday they’d take on that work and have something by May 1.
Council members indicated they would go slow on the issue – including whether it should apply only to plastic bags — but have something ready to go this summer should the Legislature not act. It acknowledged it also needed to work with local stores on the issue and see how the public felt about it.
Mayor John Moore said he was inclined to wait and “address it if the state does not.”
Kerti and Tooke said while they supported a ban on single-use plastic bags and straws, the idea of a wider ban on plastics needed deeper study and public comment.
“We will know by the end of the Legislature,” Kerti said. “But I wouldn’t want to punt this too far down the road.”
Chuck Lerwick of Dahl Disposal urged the council to act to keep plastic bags out of Yachats’ garbage.
“We don’t want the damn bags. We don’t need them,” he said, detailing how they cause problems from the moment they are put in garbage trucks, during sorting and in landfills. “They’re just bad. We are in support of not having single-use bags.”
