Michael Sol Warren | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com

By Michael Sol Warren | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com

All eyes are on Gov. Phil Murphy.

Sitting on the Governor's desk is a bill that would impose a statewide five-cent fee on single-use plastic and paper bags.

Supporters of the bill say that the fee will encourage consumers to use reusable bags and cut back on litter. Opponents, however, believe that a fee will do little to stop the trashing of New Jersey, instead only serving as the latest environmental fund for legislators to raid in their yearly quest to balance the budget.

New Jersey would be the first state to have a statewide fee on single-use bags, but there is a precedent. Washington, D.C. has had a district-wide fee in place since 2010. Here's what the Garden State can learn from the nation's capital.

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The New Jersey proposal

New Jersey's fee proposal is very similar, but not identical, to Washington D.C.'s single-use bag fee implemented by the Anacostia River Clean Up and Protection Act of 2009.

The New Jersey bill would place a five-cent fee on every single-use bag, paper or plastic, handed out to customers by a chain retailer or a store with more than 2,000 square feet of retail space.

Of that fee, one-cent would be kept by the store operator. The remaining four cents would go to a new lead abatement fund administered by the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection.

Under the proposed New Jersey fees, recipients of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, as well as people registered in the Work First New Jersey program, will be exempted from paying fees.

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The Washington, D.C. law

In Washington, D.C., the fee is also five-cents per bag.

Any business that sells any type of food or alcohol is affected to the law, which went into effect in 2010.

Of that fee, one-cent goes back to the business unless the business offers a rebate to customers that bring reusable bags. In that case, the business keeps two-cents for every disposable bag.

Most of the money collected in the District goes to a dedicated fund for cleaning up the Anacostia River, though some of the money is also used for educational programs and reusable bag handouts.

Washington D.C.'s Department of Energy and Environment runs a program that distributes reusable bags for free to senior citizens and low-income residents.

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The study problem

In 2008, before Washington, D.C. proposed its bag regulations, the District conducted a study of the trash in the Anacostia River.

The study found that nearly half of all the trash found in the river was plastic bags. The study recommended that the District pass a law regulating plastic bags, which led to the fee program, as well as laws regulating styrofoam food containers and all sorts of drink bottle and cans.

New Jersey has not done such a study, according to NJDEP spokesman Larry Hajna, leaving the proposal open to criticism from the plastics industry.

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Reported success in D.C.

The ultimate goal of the Washington, D.C. proposal was to cut back on the amount of plastic bags ending up in the Anacostia River. To that end, the fees have been successful.

According to the Anacostia Watershed Society, the amount of plastic bags found in trash traps along the river is down 75 percent since 2010.

Just this year, the Anacostia River received a passing grade from the Anacostia Watershed Society for the first time since the group began issuing its State of the Anacostia River Report Card.

"Don't listen to the naysayers," Maureen Farrington, a spokeswoman for the Anacostia Watershed Society, said when asked to give advice for New Jersey. "Your rivers are going to be cleaner, it's going to be boon to your community."

Still, the river report card has only been issued since 2014 and the river's 2018 grade was a "D" on an A-F scale. The river still got an F for trash, though the litter situation was marked as improving.

At least some of the fee money collected in D.C. has been used to help pay for educational boat tours of the river, a program that Farrington said teaches people about the watershed's ecosystem and ongoing restoration projects.

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D.C. audits the fee program

But Washington, D.C.'s bag fees may not be such a straightforward success story.

In 2014, an audit of the fee program by the District found that the money raised for the Anacostia River cleanup fund was spent largely on things other than actual cleanup actions.

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Washington Post investigation

But the questioning didn't stop with the audit.

In 2015, the Washington Post published an investigation into the effectiveness of the District's bag fees. The Washington Post found that claims of success for the bag fees were based on unscientific surveys and failed to account for bag fee revenues remaining steady. Those unchanging revenues indicate that plastic bag use in the District has remained largely unchanged since the fees were enacted.

The Post also found that from 2010 to 2015, just about a third of the money raised by the bag fees was spent on actually cleaning up the river and its watershed.

Most of the money instead was spent on educational programs, including a single $1.2 million grant that sent every fifth-grader living in Washington, D.C. on a two-night watershed field trip over a two-year period.

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Frank Conlon | The Star-Ledger file photo

Parallels to N.J.'s spending habits

The questionable spending habits found by the Washington Post investigation parallel a dubious pattern in New Jersey: The Garden State has a history of collecting money for environmental funds and then using that money to plug holes in other parts of the budget.

Redirection of funds from the controversial Exxon settlement and the repeated raiding of the state's clean energy fund are just two examples of the kinds of actions that led New Jersey voters to pass a constitutional amendment in November specifically banning those kinds of budgetary tricks.

New Jersey's bag proposal was pushed through the legislature as part of this year's state budget negotiations, leading to criticism that the effort was more about raising revenue than stopping litter. Gov. Murphy has since removed any language related to bag fees from the state budget.

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D.C. activists look forward

Farrington said that a significant number of D.C. residents still haven't warmed to the bag fees.

"Initial resistance was pretty hard, and it's kept up," Farrington said.

Going forward, Farrington said that she'd like to see D.C.'s law expanded to an outright ban on plastic bags and beyond.

"We would love to see a bag ban, but more so we'd love to see it extended to other materials," Farrington said. She added that since the bag fee was put in place, the district has banned styrofoam and a ban on plastic bottles may be coming next.

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Pushing for alternatives in N.J.

Back in New Jersey, most Garden State environmental groups support the bag fee proposal, but just as a start in a campaign to change consumer behavior. They hope that eventually the state will have an outright ban on disposable plastic bags while placing fees on single-use paper bags.

The New Jersey Sierra Club, however, is staunchly opposed to the proposed fees. The group's director, Jeff Tittel, argues that a fee program is little more than a money grab by state lawmakers and that the structure of the fee proposal may incentivize stores to hand out more bags.

Tittel would like to see an outright ban on single-use plastic bags in New Jersey.

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Catch up on the N.J. bag situation

Understand the fee bill: N.J. wants to impose fees on bags, but critics say it won't stop littering

It's on Murphy's desk now: Get ready to pay a nickel for each shopping bag if Murphy signs this bill

But will the Governor sign it?: Is 5-cent fee for plastic bags headed for the trash? N.J. environmentalists hope so

Michael Sol Warren may be reached at mwarren@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @MSolDub. Find NJ.com on Facebook.