The U.S. House unanimously approved a bill Wednesday that would allow Michigan to block Canadian trash coming into Michigan, but it appears that the legislation will quietly die in the Senate as Capitol Hill winds down for 2005-06. 

At a sparsely attended House session, Michigan Republicans and Democrats who had eagerly awaited the opportunity to make a bipartisan push for the legislation instead sparred over who is responsible for the Senate roadblock.

Republicans said a separate deal announced last week by Michigan's two Senate Democrats, which would slow cross-border trash shipments, had circumvented the House bill. Democrats countered that a key GOP senator had largely ended the debate by declaring the House legislation dead. 

"I?m very disappointed that it will not be pushed in the Senate," said Rep. Candice Miller, a Harrison Township Republican. "We did our duty in the House. We?re done." 

Rep. Sander Levin said he was equally dismayed that the long fight for a congressional solution appeared to have run out of time. 

"I do not understand, in view of the importance of this legislation and, indeed, the light workload of the House this year, why this bill was not brought up months and months ago," said Levin, a Royal Oak Democrat who represents most of Macomb County.

"Now, it's brought up at the 11th hour." 

The House action comes a week after U.S. Sens. Debbie Stabenow and Carl Levin announced a deal they had privately negotiated with Ontario officials to end the waste shipments from seven Canadian towns over the next four years. However, that pact would only stop municipal solid waste picked up at the curb - about 38 percent of the total - not waste shipped by private haulers from industrial and commercial businesses and construction and demolition sites.

The issue became highly partisan on Wednesday, with Macomb County?s two lawmakers engaged in a rhetorical battle on the House floor.

Miller said Sens. Levin and Stabenow negotiated a flawed, unenforceable agreement.

"They think it is OK to just sit back and let the trucks keep coming," Miller said during the House debate. Sander Levin, clearly rankled by Miller's remarks, defended the agreement reached by his Senate brother and Stabenow. 

"The partisanship is counterproductive," he said. "We should all have been saying this is a breakthrough agreement. Now, let's go forward, let's go further."

Sens. Stabenow and Levin put out statements Wednesday saying they support the House bill and would like to see it pass the Senate. A similar Senate bill they co-authored had made no progress over the past year in the higher chamber. 

With less than 20 business days left in the 2005-06 Senate session and numerous key bills on the agenda, a spokesman for Sen. James Inhofe, the Oklahoma Republican who chairs the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, indicated the House bill will not be taken up by the committee before the year ends. That would mean that the legislative process would start over again in January, with trash bills introduced in the House and Senate.

While the House bill was a top priority among the 15-member Michigan delegation, it became clear on Wednesday that most House members had little interest. The culmination of a multiyear effort to bring the measure to the floor was greeted by a nearly empty House chamber. The unanimous voice vote included less than two dozen participants.

The measure would give states more power to regulate waste shipments and would require federal rules for enforcing a 1992 agreement with Canada on crossborder trash flow. In anticipation of a congressional bill, the Michigan Legislature has already passed a measure that would ban Canadian trash hauling to Michigan within 90 days of President Bush signing a bill into law.

The ban would stand for two years while the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency drew up regulations to restrict trash in the future. But the legislation faced a likely court fight that could lead all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Bruce Parker, president of the Washington-based National Solid Wastes Management Association, said the chances of a legal challenge from Canada would be "probably 100 percent." A court fight waged by Michigan landfill operators would also be likely, Parker added, because a "tremendous case" can be made that the bill violates the North American Free Trade Agreement and the World Trade Organization process.

Parker said his association's short-term focus is on politics, not legal matters. 

"We don't think this bill is going to pass in the Senate because we're going to work as hard as we can to make sure that doesn't happen," he said.

Another potential problem for anti-trash lawmakers is that the language of the House bill is unclear in its definition of Canadian waste. It could be interpreted to address only municipal solid waste, much like the agreement negotiated by Sens. Levin and Stabenow. That would mean that more than 60 percent of the imported garbage would not be affected.

Restrictions of any magnitude will have their greatest impact in Macomb County, where the Pine Tree Acres landfill near New Haven handles 5.3 million cubic yards of annual trash imports, making it the busiest landfill in Michigan and the state's top destination for Ontario refuse.

Currently, nearly 80 percent of the trash flowing into the Lenox Township site comes from across the border. The landfill was intended to handle all of Macomb County's waste for the long haul.

Waste Management, which operates Pine Tree Acres, last week clarified the amount of Ontario trash flowing into their landfill. Company officials said the facility handles an average of 225 Canadian trash trucks per day, and up to 350 trucks on its busiest days.