Gadget Toll. The Toronto Star reports today that the province of Ontario will start levying a recycling fee on TVs and computers next year in the first phase of a program that will eventually cover all electronic products.

 

Beginning next April, electronics makers and importers will pay a fee of $10 for TVs, $13 for desktop computers, $12 for monitors and $2 for laptops.

 

The fees, expected to total $62 million in the first year, will be paid not to the government but to an arm's-length organization set up by Waste Diversion Ontario. The money will be used to fund the collection and recycling of electronic products from hundreds of drop-off locations to be set up across the province, the Star reports.

 

Blue-Pencil Uproar. The Washington Post, the New York Times and a host of other news organizations are giving heavy play to a former EPA official's disclosure that VP Dick Cheney's office edited statements about the health risks posed by global warming from a draft of a health official's Senate testimony last year.

 

This is just what the winding-down Bush administration needs least -- a fresh barrage of innuendo about the Dark Prince's manipulation of U.S. environmental policy.

 

Senator Barbara Boxer, for one, is hopping mad. The Senate Environment Committee chairwoman has just announced plans to hold more hearings on the scandal, I mean topic.

 

This smells like a tempest that may linger for a while. If you enjoy congressional bombast, pull up a seat. It should be quite a show.

 

Pete Fehrenbach is managing editor of Waste News. Past installments of this column are collected in the Inbox archive.

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