SLO County board banned polystyrene. Should a gang of bullies be allowed to undo it?

A countywide ban on polystyrene “to go” containers — items like coffee cups, clamshell take-out boxes and ice chests — may be killed before it even has the chance to take effect.

By a 7-6 vote, SLO County’s Integrated Waste Management Authority (IWMA) Board decided last week to begin the process of rescinding a polystyrene ban that passed overwhelmingly in October of 2019.

It’s a regressive move by local conservative politicians that ignores the very real threat polystyrene poses to the environment and to public health.

The ban was supposed to take effect April 9, after being postponed for a year on account of COVID-19.

Instead, it may become a victim of political machinations by a group of politicians willing to go to great lengths — up to and including threatening to pull out of the IWMA entirely — to get their way.

Disbanding the IWMA would have severe consequences, since each individual agency would then be in charge of meeting the state’s many recycling and disposal regulations covering everything from motor oil to electronics to used needles.

Things came to a head last fall, when some members of the IWMA board insisted the organization stop “overstepping its bounds” and stick to implementing only state and federal mandates.

Supervisor Debbie Arnold was one of the most outspoken critics; she complained that ordinances “drummed up” by the IWMA were being unfairly imposed countywide.

(The 13-member board includes all five county supervisors, a city council member from each of the seven cities and one representative of community services districts.)

Mandates-only policy

As a form of appeasement, the IWMA board voted in November to stick to implementing state and federal mandates, and to leave it to individual jurisdictions to decide whether to pass more stringent requirements.

At the time that vote was taken, it was unclear whether the “mandates only” policy would apply retroactively to the polystyrene ban that had already been approved.

One board member, Morro Bay City Councilman Jeff Heller, specifically said he did not want the policy “to undo anything we’ve done.”

His comment went unanswered.

Last week, it became clear that several members of the board — especially Supervisors Arnold, Lynn Compton and John Peschong — had every intention of undoing what had already been done.

They were adamant about rescinding the ban completely, and rejected a move to either soften the requirements of the ordinance or to postpone it from taking effect until after the COVID-19 crisis is over.

“This is not necessarily about polystyrene. This is a government process that’s just wrong,” Arnold said.

Board member John Hamon, a city councilman from Paso Robles, saw this as a way to force the North County to adopt something it didn’t want.

“It was designed to make North County comply ... and that was the rub,” he said.

New board member Scott Newton, a Pismo Beach councilman, voted to rescind even though his city already has a ban in place.

“What I’d really hate to see happen is something like this be so divisive that it puts the whole organization in jeopardy,” he said.

Atascadero City Councilman Charles Bourbeau and Robert Enns, who serves on the Cayucos Sanitary District, also voted to begin the process of killing the ordinance, though Bourbeau said he would ask his City Council to consider passing a citywide ban.

Threats posed by polystyrene

Supporters of the ban spoke about the harm that would come from doing nothing.

“It’s not really about us,” said county Supervisor Dawn Ortiz-Legg. “It’s really about our children and our grandchildren, and I just can’t get that through to folks.”

But concerns about harm to the environment and public health largely took a back seat to local politics.

Comments from the public — who universally favored keeping the ordinance in place — weren’t heeded much either.

The World Health Organization (WHO) announced in 2018 that styrene — a building block of polystyrene — had been upgraded from “possibly” carcinogenic to humans to “probably” carcinogenic.

It’s also a scourge to wildlife. Polystyrene, sometimes referred to as Styrofoam, can break into small bits and pieces consumed by animals; it’s even been detected in Antarctica’s food chain.

It’s nasty stuff that’s been outlawed by several nations; the California Legislature has considered proposals to ban polystyrene, but none has passed.

Five of SLO County’s seven cities already prohibit it; Atascadero and Paso Robles are the only ones that don’t.

The county has not adopted a ban for the unincorporated areas either, and given the conservative majority on the Board of Supervisors, there’s little chance that will happen any time soon.

And after this polystyrene debacle, we have to wonder, what’s next?

How far will these three board members go to please their constituents?

If they had the power to do so, would they rescind the plastic bag ban?

Shrug their shoulders when it comes to environmental protections?

Give oil companies free rein?

We know we aren’t going to change the minds of the three supervisors.

But we appeal to the other members of the IWMA board to show some leadership and moral responsibility and stand by an ordinance that was approved, in good faith, by an 8-2 vote, with three absences.

An ordinance, by the way, that includes a hardship exemption for businesses that would be overly burdened by its requirements.

They shouldn’t give in to threats from bullies who have to change the rules of the game when they don’t get their way.

This fight isn’t over yet; a new ordinance will have to be passed to rescind the ban, and that will require a public hearing.

We urge county residents to contact their representative on the IWMA board to let them know where you stand.

A complete list of board members, along with their contact information, is available at www.iwma.com/about/board-of-directors/

For the sake of our children and grandchildren, we need to keep this ordinance in place, or at least adopt a less stringent version that will put us on the road to phasing out this harmful material.

This story was originally published February 18, 2021 at 5:30 AM.