Trash companies worried about hauling changes

FORT COLLINS – Gallegos Sanitation President Matt Gallegos is worried that the Fort Collins city council may decide to change the way garbage and recyclables are collected in the city in a manner that threatens his 50-year-old company.

The city council is considering changing from an open system – which does not limit the number of private haulers operating in the city – to a district system, or awarding the contract for the entire city’s trash collection to a single hauler.

Either of those possibilities, Gallegos says, could be devastating to his company’s livelihood.

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“We’re definitely concerned about it,” he said. “I’d say we most likely would be (seriously impacted). But we’ve got some council members that don’t understand that.”

The city received a study by California-based R3 Consulting in July that strongly urged converting to a districted or citywide contract for trash services to reduce the number of trucks operating in the city and the damage they cause to streets.

The city also wants to improve its recycling rate, according to Ann Turnquist, Fort Collins city council policy manager. Turnquist said other cities with more control over their trash haulers have higher recycling rates.

And Fort Collins has become an exception among many of its peers, she noted. “We’re really in a minority by having an open, competitive system,” she said. “It’s a much more common model to have a district system, a city contract, or a city-run program like Loveland.”

Natural attrition

Turnquist noted that there were six residential haulers operating in Fort Collins 10 years ago and now there are only three: Gallegos, Ram Waste Systems and national giant Waste Management – a company so big it has its own local landfill east of Fort Collins.

Gallegos said if it came to a bid for a single citywide contract, there would be no way to compete with Waste Management. “When things like this happen, the little guys disappear,” he said. “They have the resources. It would not be a favorable thing for small business.”

Ray Meyer, general manager of Ram Waste Systems, said he’s also concerned about any move to change the present open system. Going to a districted or single-hauler system might not kill Ram Waste, he said, “but it would take a big chunk out of it.”

Meyer said Ram Waste did a random survey of 3,500 of its Fort Collins customers and about 3,400 said they didn’t want to see anything change.

That speaks to how people feel about being able to choose their trash-hauling company and to not have the city make that decision for them, he said.

“The point a lot of people don’t understand is we created this excellent service in this town, and to try to make a one-size-fits-all approach you’re going to have a lot of screaming,” Meyer said.

City-run systems

Other cities in Northern Colorado have a variety of trash collection systems. Evans and Loveland, for example, have city-run solid waste systems that have been running well for years. Mike Berry, solid waste supervisor for the city of Loveland, said the system consistently receives 90 percent resident satisfaction ratings and has a customer recycling rate approaching 50 percent – a level the city of Fort Collins still dreams of achieving.

“The style of service we provide encourages people to recycle,” Berry said.

Greeley, which still has an open trash collection system with several private haulers, wrestled with the notion of a districted or single-hauler system last year but ultimately rejected making a change.

“While many people supported having just one truck in their neighborhood once a week, we got huge pushback from the trash companies and people who said they wanted a choice,´ said Becky Safarick, Greeley’s community development director.

Fort Collins City Councilman Ben Manvel said he’s one of several council members who want to have a thorough discussion of the issue before the year ends.

“I thought it was worthwhile to investigate those (districting and single-hauler) possibilities,” he said. Manvel noted that the R3 study made a number of positive points about reducing the number of trucks, which cause an estimated $170,000 in city street damage each year.

“If you just look at the numbers and leave the emotion out of it, it seems like the logical thing to do,” he said. But emotion rises quickly when it comes to telling people how their trash will be collected, Manvel noted.

“It is a hot-button issue,” he said. “Like (city) logos and chickens, it’s something people can get their teeth into.”

Already districted

The council has agreed to take one possibility off the table. It will not consider creating a city-run solid waste system even though Loveland’s closed system achieves much higher recycling participation.

Manvel noted that the city already has a de facto districted system in some respects with neighborhood associations choosing one hauler for their community. He said there may be some way to emulate that on a citywide basis.

“I don’t want a heavy-handed government decision either, but there might be a way to go that reduces that truck traffic,” he said.

Turnquist said the city will take up the trash collection question again in a work session set for Dec. 9. Meantime, the city’s Natural Resources Board and Air Quality Advisory Board have both endorsed a districted collection system.

City staff, including Turnquist, Senior Environmental Planner Susie Gordon and Natural Resources Director John Stokes are leaning toward an option that would keep the open collection system while adding requirements to trash hauler licenses to increase recycling efforts.

“By implementing additional requirements on trash hauler licenses and implementing several strategies for increasing recycling, staff believes that the city can make significant progress on reaching the city’s 50 percent diversion goal,” Turnquist and fellow staff wrote in the Sept. 23 work session packet to council.

That approach, if embraced by the council, would go a long way toward calming Gallegos’ and Meyer’s fears.

“We believe in the need to improve the system,” Gallegos said. “We just don’t believe the government has to get in the middle of it.”