Council Votes to Pursue Privatizing Solid Waste Transfer System

By Stan Matthews
County Communications Program Manager

At the conclusion of a Monday morning workshop meeting on Nov. 15, the San Juan County Council directed staff to prepare a Request for Proposal to privatize the portion of County’s solid waste operation that accepts trash from self-haulers and commercial operators. The tasks of providing curbside pick-up service and hauling solid waste to the mainland are already contracted out.

Currently the County operates facilities on San Juan, Orcas and Lopez Islands where self-haulers can dump their garbage and recycling, but County Public Works Director Jon Shannon has told the Council that, without a significant infusion of money, the Solid Waste division will be forced to close its facilities on San Juan Island and Lopez Islands. Most residents would then have their garbage and recycling picked up at curbside.

Five of the six members of the Council have indicated a commitment to keeping self-haul service on the three islands. In order to keep the three facilities operating, the Council adopted a 2010 budget that included $1.6 million in capital expenditures and operating costs for the solid waste utility that was to be paid for by revenue sources which were not identified. The Council has not yet identified those sources and the utility is predicting that it will end the year nearly $1 million in debt.

As part of Monday’s workshop the Council reviewed a preliminary proposal from the County’s franchised trash hauler, San Juan Sanitation.  The company has expressed interest in taking over the trash transfer operation, if the County opts to contract out.

San Juan Sanitation’s Dan Leidecker made it clear that the company is not enamored of self-haul. He blamed the County’s cost of maintaining the transfer facilities for forcing garbage fees so high that some of its previous customers are now hauling their own trash to the mainland.

“To continue the inefficiency of self-haul, we keep raising up San Juan Sanitation’s [rates] and now we know why the town of Friday Harbor left the system,” he said.

Ultimately, Leidecker said, San Juan Sanitation would like to eliminate all transfer facilities on the islands and haul all trash and recycling directly to the mainland.

Council Member Lovel Pratt expressed concern about accommodating customers who want to carry trash to a facility themselves, “What we’ve heard from our constituents is that they do not want to go to a mandatory curbside model. . .when we put out an RFP we may want to say that we want to ensure that certain services are provided.”

Leidecker responded, “If you really feel like the public needs to have ‘drop-off’, then it can be provided; but it doesn’t have to be subsidized by the commercial players.” Currently the cost of disposing of recycling and most other sold waste utility services are paid for by the “tipping fees” charged for accepting of garbage at the County’s facilities.

In its proposal, San Juan Sanitation would still make some provision for self-haulers, but it would increase the current differential between the fees charged for its curbside and self-haul customers. Residential customers would pay about 25 percent more to dump trash into a truck themselves than to have it picked up at curbside. Other services, such as acceptance of household hazardous waste, batteries and free disposal of noxious weeds and roadside clean-up were not included in the proposal.

Council Member Pratt and some members of the public expressed concerns that privatizing trash transfer would conflict with the County’s solid waste plan’s goals to recycle, reuse and divert as much material as possible from the waste stream. Other’s argued that because of the financial crisis, immediate steps need to be taken, before attention can be turned toward other goals.

County Administrator Pete Rose emphasized that the San Juan Sanitation proposal was primarily for the Council’s background information only. County staff will draft a Request for Proposal which specifies the services prospective contractors will be required to offer.

The next step will be for the Council to approve the RFP and decide whether to solicit proposals. The motion adopted by the Council also asks staff to investigate whether some degree of privatization might be possible by expanding the scope of existing contracts rather than going through a full blown RFP process.

The County staff report, including San Juan Sanitation’s full proposal are available online at: https://sanjuanco.com/docs/Council/Privatization_Report_11-15-10.pdf