Three bills designed to curb Illinois solid and toxic waste were introduced late last month by Sen. Patrick Welch.

The bills’ key supporters in the state senate are Sens. Welch (D-Peru), Barbara Flynn Currie (D-Chicago), and Clem Balanoff (D-Chicago).

Welch, the chairman of the Energy and Environment Committee, said the initiative “is geared toward preserving the longevity of Illinois landfills.”

Welch said he thought most other states would soon develop similar plans for the prevention of pollution.

The three bills include a packaging and recycling act, an amendment to a toxic pollution reduction act and a county landfill protection act.

Under the first bill, packaging in Illinois would have to meet the following standards by 1996: package material must be “reusable five times; or made of 50 percent recycled material by weight; or made of materials that are being recycled at a statewide rate of 35 percent; or the weight of the package be reduced by at least 25 percent.”

The bill will cover all packaging used in Illinois, even if the product is imported from another state, Welch said.

“Throwaway packaging is not only the symbol of our national solid waste crisis, it is a leading contributor to the problem,” Welch said.

“The average American discards an amount of waste equal to the weight of the Statue of Liberty every five years,” Welch said.

The second bill is designed to reduce the use of toxins instead of just controlling the use, Welch said.

The bill requires industrial facilities subject to the federal Community-Right-to-Know law to develop “a pollution prevention plan which analyzes all production processes in which a listed chemical is used,” and to come up with ways to reduce use of the chemicals. The facilities would have to begin to reduce the toxins within one year of adoption of the prevention plan.

The facilities also would have to report annually to the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency on their progress in reducing the emissions. The reports would be made public upon request.

The bill also states that anyone living within 10 miles of a facility may ask the IEPA to review the adequacy of that facility’s pollution prevention plan.

A fee will be imposed on toxic use. Revenue from the fee will be used to provide technical assistance to anyone who requests it.

Welch said the Toxic Pollution Prevention bill “puts our emphasis on pollution prevention, not control. If we want to prevent pollution, we’ve got to reduce the use of toxins in our environment.

“In the past, everyone had focused on controlling the pollution. The key to this legislation is limiting the use of the toxins which will cut pollution,” he said.

The third bill is designed to prevent a county’s landfill from being overused by neighboring counties. Under the bill no county could export its garbage into another county unless it meets the other county’s recycling standards.

The bills will be submitted to the Senate Committee on Energy and Environment, before the state house or senate can vote on them. They will be submitted to the committee next Monday.

Welch said he hopes the bills get passed in as original a form as possible, but he said that some merchants and industries were opposed to the bill.