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WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Poland's prime minister said Tuesday his government has proposed new legislation aimed at stopping garbage disposal businesses from stashing massive amounts of trash and getting rid of it through illegal fires.
The new legislation will tighten regulations for running and monitoring garbage dumps and landfills. It will limit the time span and the amount of garbage that can be accumulated from three years to one, and will substantially increase fines for breaches of law.
Parliament will debate the legislation at an extraordinary session Wednesday, in reaction to a recent string of fires that produced huge clouds of hazardous smoke and kept many residents indoors.
According to the Chief Inspectorate of Environmental Protection, there are almost 8,400 garbage dumps across Poland, some 130 of them illegal.
Last month, Interior Minister Joachim Brudzinski said "huge amounts of dangerous garbage are pouring into Poland in an uncontrolled way." He said private companies pretend to bring unwanted waste from abroad — including medical waste and chemicals — for recycling, but in fact get rid of them by setting them on fire.
Brudzinski said the situation was the result of China's refusal to process garbage from Europe.
Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki says that if approved, the draft law could take effect Sept. 1.
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