Basalt officials decided Tuesday

Basalt officials decided Tuesday to take the lead in the Roaring Fork Valley to discourage use of disposable grocery bags.

The Basalt Town Council gave an informal nod to the concept of charging a small fee for use of disposable paper and plastic bags in the town's two grocery stores. A 20-cent per bag fee will be discussed when the council reviews an ordinance later this summer.

Town officials stressed they want to coordinate the bag fee with other towns in the Roaring Fork Valley, but they won't wait if other governments stall. So they will participate in meetings with elected officials from Aspen and other towns to see if general parameters of an ordinance can be worked out. If the talks don't materialize or bog down, the Basalt council will consider its own bag fee by the last week of August.

The council was pressed by the town's Green Team, an environmental board, to implement the fee. Green Team member Tripp Adams said single-use grocery bags consume natural resources that could be saved by promoting reusable bags. Information presented to the council contended that in the U.S. alone, annual production of disposable grocery bags emits almost 4 million tons of “CO2-equivalent.”

Plastic bags also break down into small pieces that enter the food chain and have health effects on animals and humans that aren't fully known yet.
“We want to see people be more environmentally responsible and not be wasteful,” Adams told the council in a work session Tuesday night.
Green Team member Gerry Terwilliger said most Green Team members want Basalt to proceed on its own rather than wait for a coordinated, regional approach.

“If we go ahead, we would be followed very quickly,” he said.
Basalt Mayor Leroy Duroux warned that Basalt could pay consequences by implementing a bag fee on its own. He said some midvalley residents have warned him they will shop in other towns if Basalt implements a bag fee at its grocery stores.