Presumably Pennsylvania has the environmental smarts to avoid a situation like the now-closed Fresh Kills landfill on New York's Staten Island, which is regarded as an environmental disaster capable of impacting Staten Island residents for generations.

Pennsylvania's ability to avert a similar situation remains strong, despite the Keystone State's dubious distinction of being the nation's largest trash importer.

Some residents of northeastern Butler County might not share that optimism, as a result of chemical waste dumping in decades past that has since contaminated their well water supplies - a problem for which a new public water system still is not in place.

However, this state has an approach at work that neither violates interstate commerce laws - under which transportation and importation of trash falls - nor sabotages the commonwealth's desire to avoid a wide-scale environmental nightmare impacting millions of people.

Specifically, higher per-ton dumping fees and a three-year-old rule making it more difficult for a landfill to expand are working to defuse the notion that Pennsylvania will always be open to all the trash anyone wants to send here.

The state also has an ally in the rising gasoline costs, which are seen as having curtailed some trash shipments here.

In 2003, Pennsylvania imported 10.6 million tons of trash, mostly from New Jersey (5.6 million tons) and New York (4.2 million tons). The overall trash-imports total last year was 10 percent lower than in 2002 and 16 percent lower than the state's peak in 2001 of 12.6 million out-of-state tons.

Regardless, concern about importation of trash must remain in place because of the larger amount of trash being generated within the state. Last year, Pennsylvania generated an all-time high of 14.8 million tons - a 5 percent jump over 2002.

Pennsylvania's ongoing emphasis on safety in regard to its landfills, the fact that the Keystone State does not have unlimited landfill space, as well as the pressures imposed by increased costs of transportation, should be causing trash-exporting states to begin putting the kind of emphasis on intrastate trash disposal that Pennsylvania long has had in place.

For New Jersey, finding much new in-state capacity will be a difficult endeavor, because of its size and growth factors. For New York, which has upstate possibilities outside the New York City metropolitan area, those options are oftentimes frowned upon because of upstate weather conditions as well as the travel distances that might be involved - and the availability of Pennsylvania as its dumping ground.

However, the noose will continue to tighten on those and other exporters as Pennsylvania's current landfill capacity continues to diminish and even-higher per-ton dumping fees are necessitated.

Pennsylvania won't have to export big amounts of trash for a long time, but it must always regard trash importation as an issue to be closely monitored. New landfills aren't something that most state residents and municipalities are willing to welcome with open arms.

This state must obey the laws governing interstate commerce, but it must have an arsenal of options for defending itself against too much "outside" trash that will burden its ability to handle its own garbage.

Pennsylvania seems to have good controls in place, and its stepped-up efforts to divert more waste to recycling or resale are cause for additional optimism.

The Keystone State is the king of trash importers, but good management of the trash that is imported or generated here has kept the commonwealth from being cast in the soiled image of an unregulated dump.

- J.R.K.