National Clothesline

The cost of using perc is going up in Texas and California due to legislation recently adopted in both states.

Texas is implementing a $15 per gallon fee on perc purchases to help create a fund that will provide drycleaners with protection against financial liability for cleanup of soil and groundwater contamination.

California’s new perc tax, initially $3 per gallon, will create money for a grant program to assist drycleaners in the transition from perc to “non toxic and non-smog forming” solvent alternatives.

Meanwhile in Massachusetts, legislation that could have resulted in an outright ban on perc has stalled, in part due to opposition from the state’s Department of Environmental Protection commissioner.

The Texas law will create a trust fund for cleaning up contaminated drycleaning sites. In addition to paying a per-gallon fee on perc, cleaners will have to pay an annual registration fee. For plants with gross annual receipts of more than $100,000, the fee will be $2,500; those with gross receipts of $100,000 or less will pay $250. A registration fee of $1,000 will be collected for drop stores owned by a drycleaning facility and $250 for drop stores not owned by a drycleaning facility.

Exempt from the fees, but still required to register, are carbon dioxide cleaning plants. Other cleaners may opt out of the program if they certify they have never used perc in Texas and never will. Those who opt out — and they have only until Jan. 1, 2004 to do so — still must register and pay a $250 fee. They won’t be subject to solvent fees and they will also be ineligible to receive any money from the fund.

For cleaners using a solvent other than perc or carbon dioxide, the per gallon fee will be $5. The solvent fees will be collected by distributors who will remit them to the state.

The fees, expected to total between $6 and $8 million a year, will be deposited in a Drycleaning Facility Release Fund which will be administered by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. Cleaners covered by the fund will be protected against financial liability for cleanup of soil and groundwater contamination beyond the first $5,000 in cleanup costs. Eligible cleaners are also exempt for judicial claims filed by the state or other parties, except a political subdivision.

The law also stipulates environmental performance standards concerning storage and disposal of drycleaning solvent wastes, installation of containment structures around equipment and solvent storage areas, sealing floor surfaces within the containment areas, closed, direct-coupled delivery of perc and no sewer discharges of contact water.

New facilities opening after Jan. 1, 2004 will be subject immediately to the performance requirements; others have until Jan. 1, 2006 to comply.

The California law was signed by Gov. Gray Davis just days after he was recalled from office in a special election Oct. 7. Davis will soon be gone, but the law will remain.

The new solvent fees apply only to perc. Initially, the rate will be $3 per gallon, but that increases by $1 every year until 2013 with the money going into the Nontoxic Dry Cleaning Inventive Trust Fund.

The fund will make grants to cleaners to switch from perc to a state-approved alternative.

At the initial $3 per gallon rate, the fee is expected to raise more than $1 million a year, based on the calculation that of 5,000 drycleaners in the state, 90 percent use perc, averaging 96 gallons a year each.

The text of the bill does not specify when the state will start collecting the fees, but the California Cleaners Association said it expects collection will begin early in 2004. CCA opposed the legislation and urged Gov. Davis to veto it. An early version of the bill had the per-gallon fee paid by every person who purchases perc, but the final version has the fee paid by every manufacturer of perc in the state and every person who imports perc into California.

Grants from the fund would be for $10,000 to cleaners who eliminate the use of perc entirely in favor of one of the approved alternatives. Legislators left it up to the California Air Resources Board to determine which alternatives will qualify, except to say that the alternative must be “non-toxic and non-smog forming.” The language suggests that wetcleaning and carbon dioxide would be the alternatives most likely to get the air board’s approval.

The air board would determine the eligibility of individual grant recipients, with one stipulation being that at least 50 percent of the grant money would “directly benefit low-income communities and communities of color that are disproportionately impacted by air pollution.”

Another provision of the bill directs the air board to establish a “demonstration project” to “showcase professional nontoxic and non-smog forming drycleaning technologies.”

Massachusetts cleaners appear to have dodged a bullet, at least for now, in the form of legislation that could have led to a complete ban of perc in the state. A bill by State Senator Steve Tolman listed perc as one of 10 substances for which alternatives exist. Tolman’s bill would have charged the state with developing plans for phasing out each of the 10 substances on the list.

Despite backing from environmental groups, the bill stumbled at a public hearing in September. Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection commissioner Robert Golledge said efforts to encourage toxin reduction should be expanded rather than outright banning of certain chemicals.

Amy Lambiaso of the State House News Service said Golledge commented after the hearing that the legislative proposal is “too prescriptive and too cost intensive.”

“Just to come out and ban these would not be the smartest way to go about this,” he said. “We’re all using this stuff.”

After the public hearing before the Natural Resources Committee, State Senator Pamela Resor, co-chair of the committee and a co-sponsor of Tolman’s bill, said she would redraft the language and amend the bill by concentrating on reducing use of the chemicals it targets.

The National Cleaners Association and the Northeast Fabricare Association were among industry groups raising voices in opposition to Tolman’s proposal.

“Exposures to perc and other chemicals identified in this bill have declined steadily over the years,” noted Peter Blake, executive director of NEFA. “Yet the proponents of (this legislation) want us to believe that these products are responsible for a laundry list of unrelated health problems.”

Drycleaning industry representative noted the steep decline in perc use over the past 10 to 15 years and that they have worked with EPA and other groups to explore alternative solvents and processes.

“Drycleaners have watched perc replacements come and go over the years, from chlorofluorocarbons to water,” said Nora Nealis, executive director of NCA. Each alternative presents its own set of concerns and trade-offs.

Even water-base systems can pose problems in Massachusetts, they noted, since 30 percent of the cleaners in the state are prohibited from discharging their waste water to a septic system.