Three Erie County Hazardous Waste Collections Events Announced

As part of National County Government Month, the Erie County Department of Environment and Planning recently announced three appointment-only Household Hazardous Waste (HHW) No-Cost Collection Events for 2023, with the first one scheduled for Saturday, May 6th in the Town of Hamburg.

To ensure short wait times, these are appointment-only drive thru events for residents of Erie County. Registration for May 6th opened today (Thursday, April 6th) and can be completed by making an online reservation by visiting www.erie.gov/recycling or by calling the HHW Information Line at (716) 858-6800. Appointments are limited and will be scheduled on a first-come, first-serve basis.  The specific location for the event in Hamburg will be provided during the registration process.

All Erie County residents also have the year-round option of using the County’s HHW Voucher Drop-off Program that allows residents to bring up to 50 pounds of eligible hazardous waste to a private facility in Tonawanda at no cost. Preregistration for that service is required and can be done either by visiting www.erie.gov/recycling or by calling (716) 998-8073.

Erie County will be partnering with the Northeast Southtowns Solid Waste Management Board (NEST) to host two other HHW Collection Events: Saturday, July 8th in the Town of Elma and Saturday September 30th in the City of Buffalo. Registration for both of those events will open approximately 30 days prior to the collection.

“Erie County’s HHW program is a convenient way for residents to properly dispose of hazardous products, which cannot be thrown out with their regular garbage, that often accumulate in basements and garages,” said Erie County Executive Mark C. Poloncarz. “These products have labels that indicate they are toxic of flammable, such as pesticides and paint thinner.”

Support for the HHW collection program is provided the NYS Department of Environmental Conservation., NEST Solid Waste Management Board, Northwest Communities Solid Waste Management Board; Town of Hamburg Highway Department; Town of Elma and the City of Buffalo.

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‘The brink of illegitimacy’: Professors warn no turning back for ‘noxious’ Supreme Court



Two American university professors Friday warned the "noxious" Supreme Court can no longer be saved.

Harvard law professor Ryan Doerfler and Yale law professor Samuel Moyn wrote an opinion piece published by The Guardian about how the high court's legitimacy has been increasingly damaged under President Donald Trump's second term. Conservative justices have handed Trump and the MAGA movement a number of wins, including overturning of Roe v. Wade, "what remains of the Voting Rights Act," and losing its "nonpartisan image."

The role of the court has shifted and with the conservative majority, the liberal justices had previously "proceeded as if their conservative peers would continue to take their own institution’s legitimacy seriously."

But over the last several months, that has also changed.

"Yet with the conservative justices shattering the Supreme Court’s non-partisan image during Trump’s second term, liberals are not adjusting much," Doerfler and Moyn wrote. "The liberal justices – Ketanji Brown Jackson, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor – have become much more aggressive in their dissents. But they disagree with one another about how far to concede that their conservative colleagues have given up any concern for institutional legitimacy. Encouragingly, Jackson pivoted to 'warning the public that the boat is sinking' – as journalist Jodi Kantor put it in a much-noticed reported piece. Jackson’s fellow liberals, though, did not follow her in this regard, worrying her strategy of pulling the 'fire alarm' was 'diluting' their collective 'impact.'"

By now, Trump has used a "shadow docket" of emergency orders to his advantage and to advance his policies.

"Similarly, many liberal lawyers have focused their criticism on the manner in which the Supreme Court has advanced its noxious agenda – issuing major rulings via the 'shadow' docket, without full-dress lawyering, and leaving out reasoning in support of its decisions," according to the writers.

Critics have argued that the conservative-majority Supreme Court, including Trump's appointees, has used the shadow docket to issue consequential rulings on controversial issues like abortion, voting rights, and immigration with minimal explanation or public deliberation, effectively allowing the court to reshape law through expedited procedures that bypass traditional briefing and oral argument requirements.

Now, "progressives are increasingly converging on the idea of both expanding and 'disempowering' federal courts and looking to see how to shake up the status quo."

"Rather than adhere to the same institutionalist strategies that helped our current crisis, reformers must insist on remaking institutions like the US supreme court so that Americans don’t have to suffer future decades of oligarchy-facilitating rule that makes a parody of the democracy they were promised," Doerfler and Moyn wrote.

"In Trump’s second term, the Republican-appointed majority on the Supreme Court has brought their institution to the brink of illegitimacy. Far from pulling it back from the edge, our goal has to be to push it off," the writers added.

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