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Garbage fight picking up

by Sito Negron

The Alliance of El Paso Waste Haulers has begun to fight over whether the city ought to take over commercial waste disposal. But, said city Rep. Susie Byrd, "They're getting the little commercial haulers stirred up when I don't think that's what we're after."

Posted on November 17, 2008

The corporation that owns El Paso Disposal and the Camino Real landfill in Sunland Park has organized a group of commercial waste haulers to fight the city's efforts to study and potentially direct garbage to the city's landfills. They started this weekend with an ad that ran in the El Paso Times, el Diario and El Paso Inc. [View ad via link below story.]

The ad by the group, called the Alliance of El Paso Waste Haulers, argued that if the city took over the commercial waste hauling business, "The City can and will set its own pricing, it will not have any incentives to be productive or competitive, and in the end, you will be 'stuck' with using the only game in town."

Roger Bristow, a spokesman for Waste Connections Inc., the owner of El Paso Disposal and Camino Real, is listed as the spokesman for the Alliance. He stated in a news release that "we’re here to inform the public that flow control will not save them money, but instead will cost them money. If they move forward with plans to municipalize commercial trash collection, that would mean the loss of hundreds of jobs that our companies provide to the people of El Paso."

Flow control, however, does not necessarily mean the city taking over the waste business, and city Rep. Susie Byrd said that the company is stirring up concerns among smaller waste haulers to protect itself.

"They're getting the little commercial haulers stirred up when I don't think that's what we're after," she said. "The issue is really what we do if we have to accommodate the waste going to Sunland Park."

Flow control is a concept -- based on a 2007 Supreme Court Ruling -- that allows cities to control waste collection and disposal.

"The Supreme Court said solid waste is a public health issue," Byrd said.

Even though part of the city study is looking at whether the city could make a go of commercial waste pickup, Byrd said the major reason for the study is to look at opening the McCombs Landfill. The impetus is uncertainty over the Camino Real dump in Sunland Park, where much of El Paso's waste ends up. That dump has a one-year operating permit from the state of New Mexico and may not receive a long-term permit, and Byrd said it's the city's responsibility to be prepared if that happens.

"It takes a long time for us to go through the environmental process," she said. "For us to (react) just the day before their permit expires would be absolutely irresponsible."

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4 reader responses to this article:

Concern

November 17, 2008

Ms. Bryd, are you telling us to "trust you"?

Juan Sandoval

November 17, 2008

As usual Ms. Byrd, and as far as I know most of City Council, are wasting taxpayers money on studies they have previously paid for. Just like the Storm Water Issue, they are spending hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars on studies and attorney’s fees that are going no where. The fact of the matter is that the, city should have opened the McCombs land fill along time ago and guess what, they dropped the ball. Now to get the McCombs land fill up and running would cost MILLIONS of taxpayer dollars. Assuming they closed the land fill in Sunland Park, the city is already so far behind the eight ball that there would be a flood of trash in Clint the likes of which the city has never seen nor is equipped to handle. The cost to the consumers would have to be raised significantly, just by the amount time a truck would have to sit and wait to get unloaded. An unseen casualty of this would be air quality, for all you GREEN People. With that many trucks idling in line to get unloaded, it would create black cloud over Clint and the Lower Valley. The City has dropped the ball on this big time and like the “Storm Water Issue” they are trying to backpedal and get something done, albeit misguided. Ms. Byrd WAKE UP, the livestock have left the barn and now you and the City have hired a consultant to tell you to close the gate, it’s too late for both. By the way the consulting firm the City hired is the same company that told them, at a cost of who knows how many thousands of dollars, to abandon the commercial disposal business all together. I think the City should stay out of the trash business and concentrate on hiring consultants, they do that very well and who knows it might even cost the tax payers significantly less money.