In March 2008, a tug-of-war had begun as Escambia County, Pensacola and ECUA tackle consolidating solid waste and recycling services in the county. We have added curbside recyling – thanks to Leadership Pensacola Class of 2008 – but the county and ECUA are still trying to figure out what to do about trash collection.
The more things change, the more things stay the same.
Trash Talk
By Jennifer Waters, published March 13, 2008
Every week, usually in the evening or early morning before work, the owner of Gulf Coast Curbside Recycling makes his rounds from mainly East and North Hill homes to Escambia County’s recycling drop-off sites.
Derek Vernier, a physical therapist, carries six plastic trash cans in the back of a black 2004 Nissan Titan truck to make the deposits.
Vernier charges $20 a month for weekly service. His budget allows him a website and an ad in Ever’man Natural Foods’ newsletter. With 15 clients, Vernier is obviously motivated by more than money.
“This is the only city I have ever lived in that does not have a curbside (recycling) service,” Vernier says. “I got tired of seeing the huge cardboard boxes in garbage cans. (Recycling) is just a way to keep the town clean.”
Vernier admits he knows nothing about the area’s solid waste management process, the local landfill or disputes over tipping fees, which are the prices per ton of solid waste landfill users must pay.
But those are among the complex financial, political and logistical issues now driving new discussions about consolidating solid waste and recycling services in Escambia County.
As a business owner, albeit a very small one, Vernier stresses to residents that curbside recycling is available.
Escambia County Commissioner Grover Robinson, who brought up solid waste consolidation and recycling at a March 5 Committee of the Whole budget workshop, says constituents ask him almost daily when the county will offer curbside recycling.
Robinson says that with three government agencies involved-the county, city of Pensacola and the Emerald Coast Utility Authority-implementing curbside recycling isn’t that simple.
It certainly isn’t.
“You really can’t do recycling without tying it to garbage,” says John Tonkin, director of Santa Rosa Clean Community System, which addresses the county’s solid waste issues.
In Escambia County, the current system for solid waste collection and disposal involves the three entities and other private companies, such as Allied Waste Services, all charging customers to take their garbage to the county-owned Perdido Landfill in Cantonment.
Escambia County, in turn, charges the landfill users a tipping fee of $31 per ton of garbage. On Nov. 1, Escambia County enacted an ordinance based on a U.S. Supreme Court decision that upheld the right of local governments to direct the flow of solid waste to publicly owned waste facilities. Escambia County’s current Integrated Solid Waste Management System now uses that “flow control” process.
“What you had before was a lot of (the garbage) leaving the area,” Robinson says.
In November, Escambia County filed a lawsuit against Allied Waste, claiming the company owes more than $1 million in tipping fees after haulers took garbage to other sites, breaking the terms of the then franchise agreement.
Now, the points of contention for ECUA officials include the recent change in the flow control process and the tipping fee increase, Robinson says. ECUA officials also say its trucks having to drive to the landfill imposes additional fuel costs and wear and tear on the vehicles, Robinson adds.
Escambia County officials maintain its tipping fee is the second lowest in the state.
“If they build a transfer station of their own, they could eliminate the wear and tear on their vehicles,” Escambia County Commissioner Mike Whitehead asserts at the March 5 meeting.
ECUA board members recently voted to increase its residential rates by 7 percent to account for the fuel costs associated with traveling to and from the Perdido Landfill, ECUA spokeswoman Nathalie Bowers says on March 11.
“The fuel surcharge is going to adjust on a quarterly basis, based on the cost of fuel,” Bowers adds.
Escambia County sold collections to ECUA in 1992.
ECUA officials say they have wanted to offer recycling, but Escambia County prevented them from doing so by filing a lawsuit around 1995.
But Robinson indicates from the recent meetings that “ECUA was a little more lukewarm and unreceptive to the recycling issue” than the city and county.
Escambia County sells recyclables from its drop-off sites after they reach the Perdido Landfill, where the items are sorted by day-laborers and Road Camp inmates from the Escambia County Jail.
Robinson says only the county’s recyclables are sold from the landfill.
“If it comes from an ECUA dump truck,” he says, “there’s no ability for us to separate.”
In the past, Escambia County had what is known as a “dirty MRF,” a dirty materials recovery facility, where about 10 percent of garbage was processed for recyclables, says Jim Howes, Escambia County’s division manager of recycling operations.
In 1996, the county also tried a “blue bag” program for recyclables in the Myrtle Grove area for about six months. But the high-cost initiative received little participation from residents, according to Howes.
“Education, education, education is the key for all these programs,” he says.
ONE GARBAGE MAN
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates that 75 percent of what Americans throw in the trash could actually be recycled, according to the environmental resource Earth 911.
Further, recycling 10,000 tons of waste creates 36 jobs, compared to one job when that amount is incinerated and six jobs when it is placed in a landfill. “Aluminum can (the most valuable item in your bin) recycling can fund the entire cost of curbside collection,” Earth 911 reports.
ECUA Executive Director Steve Sorrell says offering recycling is “strictly a service issue” for his organization, which does not currently offer any formal recycling programs.
“The problem is there is a cost associated with recycling, and those costs will have to be passed along to the customers,” says Sorrell, who estimates the fee would be an additional $2 -$5 per month for each household. “For (Escambia County), it’s a profit.”
Despite their differences, officials with the ECUA, Escambia County and Pensacola have met three times this year to discuss solid waste before Robinson brought their talks before the Escambia County Commission at the recent workshop.
“We can’t speak for our boards,” Robinson says. “We can only take some ideas back to the board.”
When Robinson did that on March 5, Whitehead took issue with the fact that the subject was not brought up at a Committee of the Whole meeting, and that the commission was just then learning of the previous discussions. Other participants in the talks have been Sorrell, ECUA board member Logan Fink, Escambia County Administrator Bob McLaughlin, Pensacola City Councilman Mike Wiggins, Pensacola City Manager Tom Bonfield, and Escambia County Director of Solid Waste Management Sandy Jennings.
One option being discussed involves ECUA handling solid waste and buying or leasing the landfill from the county.
“That way, all these problems would go away,” Sorrell says.
But “what’s the advantage of doing that when that’s a revenue producer for us?” Whitehead asks.
Escambia County Commissioner Gene Valentino suggests forming a joint task force to discuss consolidation.
Robinson and Wiggins say they didn’t go into the previous discussions focused on consolidation, but that’s where they ended up. Robinson indicates the three entities agreed consolidation would be the best long-term solution.
“It’s probably more appropriately an ECUA responsibility,” Wiggins says.
Sorrell says residents will have an opportunity to say what they want when the consolidation discussion gets to that point.
“From a taxpayers and business perspective, there is something not right about having two separate public entities (which I fund) in conflict over handling the waste (I generate),” Jennings, Escambia’s director of solid waste management, wrote of ECUA and the county in a Jan. 30 issue paper for the discussions. “The issue is worth researching.”
Robinson indicates ECUA is not interested in selling collections, but that option was also discussed at the commission meeting.
“The concept of purchasing that garbage operation from ECUA really rubs me wrong because it’s taking taxpayer dollars and paying another taxpayer organization,” Whitehead says. “It’s a transfer of funds.”
Robinson told the commissioners the earlier meetings were held because ECUA officials have sought a quick resolution prior to their board meeting at the end of March.
During the discussions, the city officials brought up getting out of the solid waste business altogether. Issues about liabilities, especially if there is a major weather event, were also discussed.
Whitehead says there is no way to get rid of the environmental liability, and that has been the stumbling block in talks about consolidation in the past.
DINERO IN DEBRIS
The funds Escambia County generates from its recyclables and the tipping fees go toward the county’s recycling programs.
“(But) there’s a difference between tipping fees and what customers are charged for hauling,” Howes points out.
The county services that are funded through the proceeds include the drop-off recycling and educational outreach program, a commercial waste paper program, office recycling for county employees, and end-of-life electronics and waste tire programs.
“We are not just throwing stuff in the landfill,” Howes says. “That $31 pays for all of that.” The programs are “free to the customer, but not free to us.”
Howes estimates the county is receiving more than $300,000 annually for the recyclables.
In Santa Rosa County, proceeds from recyclables at drop-off locations go to ARC Gateway, an organization that provides services to people with developmental disabilities, according to Tonkin of Santa Rosa Clean. Tonkin says Santa Rosa cuts a check to ARC so the agency can pay its labor force, and then the county gets the remainder. “(But) that has not happened in quite awhile,” Tonkin says. “Most of the time, the county owes them money.”
GREEN LIVING
Drop-off locations for recyclables, of course, are located throughout the Pensacola area. Santa Rosa County maintains around 30 sites, and Escambia has bins at 17 locations.
“I always see people there,” Gulf Coast Curbside Recycling’s Vernier says of the city’s Summit Boulevard site on Sundays.
The drop-off locations have varying numbers of containers. The Summit Boulevard Fire Station site, with nine containers, is perhaps the busiest recycling drop-off location in the county.
By contrast, the City of Gulf Breeze offers a successful curbside recycling program through Allied Waste, which takes materials to a central processing facility. The city also accepts recyclables at a recycling and trash transfer station.
Throughout the fall, the City of Gulf Breeze sought input from its residents to help guide decision making about the garbage collection contract, which expired on Feb. 1.
“The results indicated a very high interest in keeping or expanding household recyclable collection, and a strong desire to keep services at current cost levels,” reports the city of Gulf Breeze.
As a result, after reviewing bids, the city on March 1 entered into a five-year contract with Allied Waste that provides residents with now bi-weekly pickup of enlarged recycling carts, which are similar to trash containers with wheels, and hold nearly five times more material than the previous recycling bins that were used.
Allied’s recycling collection is included in the franchise fee Gulf Breeze residents pay for basic curbside service, which was just reduced to $16.50 a month.
Steve Milford of the city of Gulf Breeze, Tonkin of Santa Rosa Clean and others say recycling is not profitable for municipalities, especially with the rising cost of fuel. The biggest economic benefit to recycling, Milford says, is that you avoid the disposal fee at the landfill.
“Our experience has been that (recycling) is not a money maker,” Tonkin echoes. “But some of the markets (for recyclables) are opening up better.”
Over the long haul, however, recycling “is absolutely the right thing to do,” Milford says.
Consolidation is planned for discussion at the Escambia Board of County Commissioners Committee of the Whole meeting at 9 a.m. Thursday, March 13. The issue will also be talked about at the joint Escambia County Commission and Pensacola City Council meeting at 4 p.m. Tuesday March 18.
Regardless of the meetings and agendas, Gulf Coast Curbside Recycling’s Vernier plans to continue transporting recyclables in his pickup truck.
“It makes me feel good that I’m doing a good thing, and I can make a little extra money on the side,” he says.
For his part, Robinson plans to keep pushing for consolidation.
“The long-term goal should be for one (entity) to do it,” he says. “It would be a lot simpler. We’ve just got to find a way to get there.”
Leadership Pensacola Lead The Way
LIVING GREEN
Talk about a class project.
Leadership Pensacola’s class of 2008 has launched a “LiveGreen Escambia” initiative that will involve distributing thousands of free recycling bin toolkits to area residents.
“We’re just now starting to get the word out there,” says LeaP member Cameron Smith.
The toolkit consists of a recycling bin with an energy efficient light bulb, a reusable shopping bag, a list of recycling drop-off locations, and an easy guide on how to live green Escambia.
“LeaP knows Escambia County cannot change overnight,” the materials say. “The idea is to start small, and have the movement grow.”
About 1,500 kits have been requested so far, and 3,200 will be available in April, says LeaP member Natasha Reynolds.
LeaP, a project of the Pensacola Area Chamber of Commerce, has 42 people in its 2008 class.
The green toolkits are scheduled to be distributed at Bayview Park in East Hill from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. on “Earth Day,” which is April 19. Bayview Park is located at 20th Avenue and Blount Street in East Hill on Bayou Texar.
On the same day, kits are also going to be distributed at a number of neighborhood parks.
“We’re so excited,” Reynolds says. “We felt like this is something we can change, and our region needs it.”
Those who are unable to pick up a toolkit at the Earth Day event may request one. Contact the Pensacola Area Chamber of Commerce at 438-4081 or via e-mail at livegreenescambia@gmail.com. Supplies are limited and are being provided on a first come, first serve basis. For more information on the program, visit livegreenescambia.com.
For a list of Escambia County’s recycling sites and links to recycling guidelines and related information, visit www.escambiarecycles.com and click on the “Be an Angel, Recycle” link.
For details on where to find recycling containers and links to other Santa Rosa County information, visit www.co.santa-rosa.fl.us/recycle/index.html.
Consolidation is planned for discussion at the Escambia Board of County Commissioners Committee of the Whole meeting at 9 a.m. Thursday, March 13. The issue will also be talked about at the joint Escambia County Commission and Pensacola City Council meeting at 4 p.m. Tuesday March 18.