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Committee Substitute House Bill 4014 History

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Key: Green = existing Code. Red = new code to be enacted

COMMITTEE SUBSTITUTE

FOR

H. B. 4014

(By Delegates R. Phillips, Tomblin, Marcum, Ferro, White

Eldridge, Diserio, Iaquinta, Barker and Skaff)

 

(Originating in the House Committee on Judiciary)

[January 15, 2014]

 

A BILL to amend and reenact §22-15A-2 and §22-15A-4 of the Code of West Virginia, 1931, as amended, relating to the offense of littering; amending definition of litter; and increasing criminal penalties for littering.

Be it enacted by the Legislature of West Virginia:

    That §22-15A-2 and §22-15A-4 of the Code of West Virginia, 1931, as amended, be amended and reenacted to read as follows:

ARTICLE 15A. THE A. JAMES MANCHIN REHABILITATION ENVIRONMENTAL ACTION PLAN.

§22-15A-2. Definitions.

    Unless the context clearly indicates a different meaning or defined elsewhere in this chapter, as used in this article:

    (1) "Beneficial use" means the use or reuse of whole waste tires or tire derived material which are reused in constructing retaining walls, rebuilding highway shoulders and subbase, building highway crash attenuation barriers and other civil engineering applications, feed hopper or watering troughs for livestock, other agricultural uses approved by the Department of Environmental Protection, playground equipment, boat or truck dock construction, house or building construction, go-cart, motorbike or race track barriers, recapping, alternative daily cover or similar types of beneficial applications: Provided, That waste tires may not be reused as fencing, as erosion control structures, along stream banks or river banks or reused in any manner where human health or the environment, as determined by the Secretary of the Department of Environmental Protection, is put at risk.

    (2) “Brand” means the name, symbol, logo, trademark, or other information that identifies a product rather than the components of the product.

    (3) "Collected for commercial purposes” means taking solid waste for disposal from any person for remuneration regardless of whether or not the person taking the solid waste is a common carrier by motor vehicle governed by article two, chapter twenty-four-a of this code.

    (4) “Computer” means a desktop, personal computer or laptop computer, including the computer monitor. Computer does not include a personal digital assistant device, computer peripheral devices such as a mouse or other similar pointing device, a printer or a detachable keyboard.

    (5) "Court” means any circuit, magistrate or municipal court.

    (6) “Covered electronic device” means a television, computer or video display device with a screen that is greater than four inches measured diagonally. “Covered electronic device” does not include a video display device that is part of a motor vehicle or that is contained within a household appliance or commercial, industrial or medical equipment.

    (7) "Department" means the Department of Environmental Protection.

    (8) "Litter" means all waste material, including, but not limited to, any garbage, refuse, trash, disposable package, container, can, bottle, paper, covered electronic devices, ashes, cigarette or cigar butt, carcass of any dead animal or any part thereof or any other offensive or unsightly matter, but not including the wastes of primary processes of mining, logging, sawmilling, farming or manufacturing: Provided, That, litter does not include naturally occuring biodegradable materials, under three pounds, including but not limited to vegetable, fruit and other plants.

    (9) "Litter receptacle" means those containers suitable for the depositing of litter at each respective public area designated by the secretary's rules promulgated pursuant to subsection (e), section three of this article.

    (10) “Manufacturer” means a person that is the brand owner of a covered electronic device or television sold or offered for sale in this state by any means, including transactions conducted through retail sales outlets, catalogs or the Internet.

    (11) "Person" means a natural person, corporation, firm, partnership, association or society and the plural as well as the singular.

    (12) "Public area" means an area outside of a municipality, including public road and highway rights-of-way, parks and recreation areas owned or controlled by this state or any county of this state or an area held open for unrestricted access by the general public.

    (13) “Recyclable materials” means those materials that would otherwise become solid waste for disposal in a refuse disposal system and which may be collected, separated or processed and returned to the marketplace in the form of raw materials or products.

    (14) "Remediate or remediation" means to remove all litter, solid waste and tires located above grade at a site: Provided, That remediation does not include clean up of hazardous waste.

    (15) “Television” means any telecommunication system device that can receive moving pictures and sound broadcast over a distance and includes a television tuner or a video display device peripheral to a computer in which the display contains a television tuner.

    (16) ”Secretary” means the Secretary of the Department of Environmental Protection.

    (17) “Video display device” means an electronic device with an output surface that displays or is capable of displaying moving graphical images or visual representations of image sequences or pictures that show a number of quickly changing images on a screen to create the illusion of motion. Video display device includes a device that is an integral part of the display and cannot easily be removed from the display by the consumer and that produces the moving image on the screen. A “video display device” may use a cathode-ray tube (CRT), liquid crystal display (LCD), gas plasma, digital light processing, other image-projection technology or imaging display technologies.

    (18) "Waste tire" means any continuous solid or pneumatic rubber covering designed to encircle the wheel of a vehicle but which has been discarded, abandoned or is no longer suitable for its original, intended purpose nor suitable for recapping, or other beneficial use because of wear, damage or defect. A tire is no longer considered to be suitable for its original intended purpose when it fails to meet the minimum requirements to pass a West Virginia motor vehicle safety inspection. Used tires located at a commercial recapping facility or tire dealer for the purpose of being reused or recapped are not waste tires.

    (19) "Waste tire monofill or monofill" means an approved solid waste facility where no solid waste except waste tires are placed for the purpose of long term storage for eventual retrieval for marketing purposes.

    (20) "Waste tire processing facility" means a solid waste facility or manufacturer that accepts waste tires generated by sources other than the owner or operator of the facility for processing by such means as cryogenics, pyrolysis, pyroprossing cutting, splitting, shredding, quartering, grinding or otherwise breaking down waste tires for the purposes of disposal, reuse, recycling and/or marketing.

    (21) "Waters of the state" means generally, without limitation, natural or artificial lakes, rivers, streams, creeks, branches, brooks, ponds, impounding reservoirs, springs, wells, watercourses and wetlands.

    (22) "Yard waste" means grass clippings, weeds, leaves, brush, garden waste, shrub or tree prunings and other living or dead plant tissues, except that materials, which due to inadvertent contamination or mixture with other substances which render the waste unsuitable for composting, are not yard waste: Provided, That the same or similar waste generated by commercial agricultural enterprises is excluded.

§22-15A-4. Unlawful disposal of litter; civil and criminal penalty; litter control fund; evidence; notice violations; litter receptacle placement; penalty; duty to enforce violations.

    (a) (1) No person shall may place, deposit, dump, throw or cause to be placed, deposited, dumped or thrown any litter as defined in section two of this article, in or upon any public or private highway, road, street or alley; any private property; any public property; or the waters of the state or within one hundred feet of the waters of this state, except in a proper litter or other solid waste receptacle.

    (2) It is unlawful for any person to place, deposit, dump, throw or cause to be placed, deposited, dumped or thrown any litter from a motor vehicle or other conveyance or to perform any act which constitutes a violation of the motor vehicle laws contained in section fourteen, article fourteen, chapter seventeen-c of this code.

    (3) If any litter is placed, deposited, dumped, discharged, thrown or caused to be placed, deposited, dumped or thrown from a motor vehicle, boat, airplane or other conveyance, it is prima facie evidence that the owner or the operator of the motor vehicle, boat, airplane or other conveyance intended to violate the provisions of this section.

    (4) Any person who violates the provisions of this section by placing, depositing, dumping or throwing or causing to be placed, deposited, dumped or thrown any litter, not collected for commercial purposes, in an amount not exceeding one hundred pounds in weight or twenty-seven cubic feet in size, is guilty of a misdemeanor. Upon conviction, he or she is subject to a fine of not less than $100 $250 nor more than $1,000, or in the discretion of the court, sentenced to perform community service by cleaning up litter from any public highway, road, street, alley or any other public park or public property, or waters of the state, as designated by the court, for not less than eight twenty-four nor more than sixteen hours one hundred hours, or both.

    (5) Any person who violates the provisions of this section by placing, depositing, dumping or throwing or causing to be placed, deposited, dumped or thrown any litter, not collected for commercial purposes, in an amount greater than one hundred pounds in weight or twenty-seven cubic feet in size, but less than five hundred pounds in weight or two hundred sixteen cubic feet in size is guilty of a misdemeanor. Upon conviction he or she is subject to a fine f o not less than $1,000 nor more than shall be fined $2,000, or in the discretion of the court, may be sentenced to perform community service by cleaning up litter from any public highway, road, street, alley or any other public park or public property, or waters of the state, as designated by the court, for not less than sixteen nor more than thirty-two hours, or both two hundred hours.

    (6) Any person who violates the provisions of this section by placing, depositing, dumping or throwing or causing to be placed, deposited, dumped or thrown any litter in an amount greater than five hundred pounds in weight or two hundred sixteen cubic feet in size or any amount which had been collected for commercial purposes is guilty of a misdemeanor. Upon conviction, the person is subject to a fine shall be fined not less than $2,500 or not more than $25,000 or confinement in jail for not more than one year or both. In addition, the violator may be guilty of creating or contributing to an open dump as defined in section two, article fifteen, chapter twenty-two of this code and subject to the enforcement provisions of section fifteen of said that article.

    (7) Any person convicted of a second or subsequent violation of this section is subject to double the authorized range of fines and community service for the subsection violated.

    (8) The sentence of litter clean up shall be verified by environmental inspectors from the Department of Environmental Protection. Any defendant receiving the sentence of litter clean up shall provide, within a time to be set by the court, written acknowledgment from an environmental inspector that the sentence has been completed and the litter has been disposed of lawfully.

    (9) Any person who has been found by the court to have willfully failed to comply with the terms of a litter clean up sentence imposed by the court pursuant to this section is subject to, at the discretion of the court, double the amount of the original fines and community service penalties originally ordered by the court.

    (10) All law-enforcement agencies, officers and environmental inspectors shall enforce compliance with this section within the limits of each agency’s statutory authority.

    (11) No portion of this section restricts an owner, renter or lessee in the lawful use of his or her own private property or rented or leased property or to prohibit the disposal of any industrial and other wastes into waters of this state in a manner consistent with the provisions of article eleven, chapter twenty-two of this code. But if any owner, renter or lessee, private or otherwise, knowingly permits any such of these materials or substances to be placed, deposited, dumped or thrown in such a location that high water or normal drainage conditions will cause any such these materials or substances to wash into any waters of the state, it is prima facie evidence that the owner, renter or lessee intended to violate the provisions of this section: Provided, That if a landowner, renter or lessee, private or otherwise, reports any placing, depositing, dumping or throwing of these substances or materials upon his or her property to the prosecuting attorney, county commission, the Division of Natural Resources or the Department of Environmental Protection, the landowner, renter or lessee will be presumed to not have knowingly permitted the placing, depositing, dumping or throwing of the materials or substances.

    (b) Any indication of ownership found in litter shall be is prima facie evidence that the person identified violated the provisions of this section: Provided, That no inference may be drawn solely from the presence of any logo, trademark, trade name or other similar mass reproduced things of identifying character appearing on the found litter.

    (c) Every person who is convicted of or pleads guilty to disposing of litter in violation of subsection (a) of this section shall pay a civil penalty in the sum of not less than $200 $250 nor more than $1,000 $2,000 as costs for clean up, investigation and prosecution of the case, in addition to any other court costs that the court is otherwise required by law to impose upon a convicted person.

    The clerk of the circuit court, magistrate court or municipal court in which these additional costs are imposed shall, on or before the last day of each month, transmit fifty percent of a civil penalty received pursuant to this section to the State Treasurer for deposit in the State Treasury to the credit of a special revenue fund to be known as the Litter Control Fund which is hereby continued and was transferred to the Department of Environmental Protection. Expenditures for purposes set forth in this section are not authorized from collections but are to be made only in accordance with appropriation and in accordance with the provisions of article three, chapter twelve of this code and upon fulfillment of the provisions set forth in article two, chapter five-a of this code. Amounts collected which are found from time to time to exceed the funds needed for the purposes set forth in this article may be transferred to other accounts or funds and designated for other purposes by appropriation of the Legislature.

    (d) The remaining fifty percent of each civil penalty collected pursuant to this section shall be transmitted to the county or regional solid waste authority in the county where the litter violation occurred. Moneys shall be expended by the county or regional solid waste authority for the purpose of litter prevention, clean up and enforcement. The county commission shall cooperate with the county or regional solid waste authority serving the respective county to develop a coordinated litter control program pursuant to section eight, article four, chapter twenty-two-c of this code.

    (e) The Commissioner of the Division of Motor Vehicles, upon registering a motor vehicle or issuing an operator's or chauffeur's license, shall issue to the owner or licensee, as the case may be, a summary of this section and section fourteen, article fourteen, chapter seventeen-c of the code.

    (f) The Commissioner of the Division of Highways shall cause appropriate signs to be placed at the state boundary on each primary and secondary road, and at other locations throughout the state, informing those entering the state of the maximum penalty provided for disposing of litter in violation of subsection (a) of this section.

    (g) Any state agency or political subdivision that owns, operates or otherwise controls any public area as may be designated by the secretary by rule promulgated pursuant to subdivision (8), subsection (a), section three of this article shall procure and place litter receptacles at its own expense upon its premises and shall remove and dispose of litter collected in the litter receptacles. After receiving two written warnings from any law-enforcement officer or officers to comply with this subsection or the rules of the secretary, any state agency or political subdivision that fails to place and maintain the litter receptacles upon its premises in violation of this subsection or the rules of the secretary shall be fined $30 per day of the violation.


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