110
Rehnquist, C. J., dissenting
Americans generated nearly 196 million tons of municipal solid waste in 1990, an increase from 128 million tons in 1975. See U. S. Environmental Protection Agency, Characterization of Municipal Solid Waste in the United States: 1992 Update, p. ES-3. Under current projections, Americans will produce 222 million tons of garbage in the year 2000. Ibid. Generating solid waste has never been a problem. Finding environmentally safe disposal sites has. By 1991, it was estimated that 45 percent of all solid waste landfills in the Nation had reached capacity. 56 Fed. Reg. 50980 (1991). Nevertheless, the Court stubbornly refuses to acknowledge that a clean and healthy environment, unthreatened by the improper disposal of solid waste, is the commodity really at issue in cases such as these, see, e. g., Chemical Waste Management, supra, at 350 (Rehnquist, C. J., dissenting), and Fort Gratiot Sanitary Landfill, Inc. v. Michigan Dept. of Natural Resources, 504 U. S. 353, 368 (1992) (Rehnquist, C. J., dissenting).
Notwithstanding the identified shortage of landfill space in
the Nation, the Court notes that it has "little difficulty," ante, at 104, concluding that the Oregon surcharge does not operate as a compensatory tax, designed to offset the loss of available landfill space in the State caused by the influx of out-of-state waste. The Court reaches this nonchalant conclusion because the State has failed "to identify a specific charge on intrastate commerce equal to or exceeding the surcharge." Ibid. (emphasis added). The Court's myopic focus on "differential fees" ignores the fact that in-state producers of solid waste support the Oregon regulatory program through state income taxes and by paying, indirectly, the numerous fees imposed on landfill operators and the dumping fee on in-state waste. Ore. Rev. Stat. § 459.005 et seq. (1991).
We confirmed in Sporhase v. Nebraska ex rel. Douglas, 458 U. S. 941 (1982), that a State may enact a comprehensive regulatory system to address an environmental problem or
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