A line of trucks, some of them from other counties and some from private haulers, line up like a flock of gulls outside a Greenville County landfill.
There are plenty of actual gulls too.
There is also a distinct odor, that a manager here described as "the smell of money."
Greenville attorney Donald Moorhead said she's exactly right.
"Well there's a lot of money to be made in garbage," Moorhead said.
Moorhead said all that money is buying a bad law that would cost taxpayers, threaten local budgets and turn South Carolina into an out-of-state dump.
"The people that are going to pay for it are the citizens of this state," Moorhead said.
It's called the "Business Freedom To Choose Act". The only business it covers is trash.
It would ban local counties from making any rules that determine where local garbage is hauled.
The SC Association of Counties issued a legislative alert, saying it would allow private companies to reglulate themselves and site landfills where they choose while passing the costs on to taxpayers.
"The counties would not be able to determine where waste goes how much tonnage is involved and where it comes from including out of state," said Moorhead.
That much isn't clear from the text of the bill, which has already passed the state House. The law does require counties to dispose of their waste at a cost that the Association of Counties puts at $55 million a year.
Most pay for it by charging a fee for each load dropped off. Some, primarily those who have to sell bonds to borrow money for landfill construction, pass local laws that require all trash within their borders to go to their landfill. That way they can guarantee the revenue to repay the debt.
The bill would wipe away those local restrictions and could put some counties of defaulting on their debt.
Greenville Representative Bruce Bannister is a sponsor of the act.
"That issue has been raised and we're looking to be sure the bill didn't go too far. We're not intending to put counties in the position they can't meet their bond obligation," Bannister said.
Bannister said critics misunderstand the bill and that it's about protecting business from being trapped by unfair prices.
