As our story in Thursday's Daily News made clear, City Councilman Bill Green is serious about cleaning up the dumpster situation on Philadelphia streets and sidewalks. He proposes a medallion system that would make it easier for a single city employee - rather than a hodgepodge of departments - to identify and fine those who misuse or overuse dumpsters on our urban passageways. So far the main opposition has been from the Chamber of Commerce.

John Jonik, one of the most vocal of Philly's community of "Dumpster Diver" artists - who really do get into trash receptacles if necessary to find castaway items for use in art (or around the home) - doesn't like the idea either, and volunteered to talk about it for this Dumpster Divers Dispatch.

It's not the easy identification of responsibility Jonik is against, but the doubling of city fees that seems to be the price tag for implementing the plan (e.g. the fee for a standard "two-yarder" would jump from $300 to $600). Back when Green first started pushing for this in late spring, Jonik immediately ran up the red flag, and he hasn't changed his tune in the waning days of summer.

"First of all,  I'm against the idea of 'user fees' for any public service whatsoever," he stipulates. "It's in the public interest to have dumpsters to keep the city cleaner and therefore the whole public should conttibute to that through their taxes. Whatever the public services cost determines how much taxes should be."

But more than the ideological friction, Jonik sees trouble in the practical effects of the change: "Any fee hike is going to encourage short dumping and discourage clean-ups of lots and abandoned houses and other projects. They'd be less inclined to do it. Maybe the big contractors don't care - the cost would be passed on to their customers and such - but I think you'll see a change in places that would ordinarily be cleaned out by community groups."

Having been to a couple of "clean-outs" where the Dumpster Divers got the word out and got massive amounts of (mostly useable or re-purpose-able) junk out of the way before the finer-grain trash and garbage had to be hauled out, I can see how those smaller-scale operations could be hit. But in terms of problems or benefits, it's not all black and white.

Notably, Jonik admits that an increase in "short dumping" could be good for his ilk, as more trash would be visible and available in, say, vacant lots. "Sure, there's that: I wouldn't have to climb into the dumpster," he says with a rueful chuckle. "But there are larger issues.  Even if this would benefit Dumpster Divers, in spite of that I still disagree with it."