Kudos to Norwich for using the money the city is getting from a 5-cent surcharge on the price of liquor "nips" to hire an environmental complaince coordinator. Other towns should not miss the opportunity, nor the requirement, to follow suit.

Municipalities in the state received their first disbursements last month from liquor wholesalers whose products are sold in stores in the respective towns. A law enacted in the last General Assembly session went into effect in October, triggering a semiannual payment equal to 5 cents for every nip bottle sold. An accounting of most but not yet all of the first disbursement showed payments in the tens of thousands of dollars — money that Norwich, Groton, New London, Montville, East Lyme, Stonington and others would not otherwise have.

The towns can expect the next payments in October, and semiannually after that. The surcharge will create a modest but dependable source of revenue for as long as customers buy nips.

Wholesale and retail liquor businesses championed the surcharge as a means to remove the vast amount of litter caused by the tiny plastic bottles, which are not recyclable because they are too small for recycling machinery. Since nips are not recyclable they have carried no deposit. Frequently, a purchaser of the item that the law defines as a "beverage container containing a spirit or liquor of fifty milliliters or less" drains the nip and tosses it out the car or truck window.

Nor do those who collect bottles and cans to redeem deposits have an incentive to pick up the nips. A liquor industry effort, Three Tiers for Connecticut, recognized that the litter was mounting up, but a marketing campaign to get people to throw them into trash bins did not do enough to lower the amount of discarded plastic.

The surcharge statute guarantees a modest semiannual windfall for towns but also requires that they use the money as intended, for cleaner streets and environmental cleanup generally. Public Act 21-58, section 10, gives the towns a welcome range of options for "reducing the generation of solid waste or the impact of litter caused by such solid waste." That may include hiring a recycling coordinator, as Norwich plans to do; installing storm drain filters to block nips and other solid waste; or buying and using a mechanical street sweeper to remove debris from streets and adjacent areas.

When Day Staff Writer Johana Vazquez asked finance directors in local municipalities how their towns would be using amounts that could total $25,000 to $50,000 per year, most said no determination has been made. In the context of multi-million-dollar budgets, particularly with the influx this year of federal Covid relief funds, that may not be surprising. Maybe the slow reaction is just the human reaction to a windfall — "Now, what will we do with that?" — rather than any misunderstanding of the intent of the law and its requirements.

A new fiscal year starts in two months, however. Even if the budget is already adopted, towns should be looking for ways to make inroads as soon as possible on the litter that messes up drainage and dirties up the streets. They need to ensure that the nips money doesn't mysteriously get lost in general funds.

Over time, towns will be able to predict a revenue amount that should remain relatively stable. The nickel-per-nip surcharge is not a deposit for redemption, like the familiar process for larger bottles and cans. It begins and ends with a set amount that the wholesaler charges the retailer, who recoups a fraction of that each time a nip is sold to a customer. The wholesaler passes along to the town what the retailer paid in the first place.

A liquor industry spokesman told The Day that about 90 million nips are sold annually in Connecticut and acknowledged a frequent purchaser pattern of discarding empty nips immediately, before a police officer, boss or family member might notice the evidence of drinking. Obviously, the surcharge does not address problem drinking, only problem littering — but that is no small thing. Now it's on the towns to carry through with the intent of the law.

The Day editorial board meets with political, business and community leaders to formulate editorial viewpoints. It is composed of President and Publisher Timothy Dwyer, Executive Editor Izaskun E. Larraneta, Owen Poole, copy editor, and Lisa McGinley, retired deputy managing editor. The board operates independently from The Day newsroom.