Environmentalists are over the moon about passage by two D.C. Council committees of the Anacostia River Clean Up and Protection Act of 2009. The act would place a 5-cent tax on “disposable, non-recyclable plastic carryout bags provided by grocery stores, drugstores, liquor stores, restaurants, and food vendors,” and establish a fund where fees would be deposited.

One of several residents I spoke with, who doesn’t consider himself a green-Earth-global-warming acolyte, endorsed the council’s preliminary action. In what bordered on a harangue, he talked about the bill’s importance, referring to a PBS television report, dredging equipment placed miles off the San Francisco shore and a desert in some African country where plastic bags line the ground.