February 22, 2007   

Trash Talk
By Jack D. McNamara

We talk of trash. Alpine’s contracted “partner,” Duncan Disposal Inc. (DD), is out and Texas Disposal Systems (TDS) is in as of February 1. Some of Duncan Disposal’s employees are apparently back at work after a highly publicized “strike.” Duncan Disposal continues to serve eight communities, none of which is in the Alpine city limits. Once again Alpine makes its way alone.

The replacement of one trash company for another has been a process underway for more than a year after Duncan Disposal asked for a 17% increase in rates. That last increase request set off a public examination of Duncan Disposal which was not to their advantage. As 2006 ended heated final negotiations, charges of bad faith and interruptions in trash service all disturbed the peace during our icy holidays. Not once did anyone accuse anyone else of Marfaitis, however.

The Nimby News meanwhile was digging. By that we mean that in clearing old files we discovered some old city utility receipts.

In May 1993 our “garbage” bill was $10.34. At that time the city owned the trash trucks and they dumped it into gullies in an area southeast of Alpine where a guy named “Little Joe” then covered the trash with the aid of a bulldozer.

This sort of trash disposal arrangement, common all over the western U.S., could not be countenanced so the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) started issuing regulations for landfills. Alpine was forced to close our down home existing landfill and open a new one eight miles out of town. Which we did, at a cost of a couple million in debt. After the new landfill was opened, Alpine city fathers, with unseemly haste, “privatized” our trash collection (meaning the city sold the dump trucks and the dumpsters) and management of the million-dollar dump was contracted to Duncan Disposal.

My last garbage charge from the Duncan Disposal era (through January 25, 2007) was $22.13 with an additional $2.50 charge for “recycling.”

Within the next two weeks I will get another utility bill from the city of Alpine. According to their ordinance posted publicly, my trash bill will rise to $26.00 in the first month with TDS.

In 10 years of privatized trash my bill more than doubled. The trash trucks and dumpsters remained the same, never replaced. Many of the drivers are the same. Such are the benefits of privatization. Thank you Ronald Reagan, same stuff at twice the price.

One of the more ironic aspects of this experience concerns the recycling charge.

Recycling was in 1993 an entirely voluntary program led by Hal Flanders. With the new landfill in place Flanders asked the city to pick up the program and they did, grudgingly. But the original recyclers became elderly, some moved away and by the millennium there was no recycling other than a humble milk crate for paper picked up by Duncan Disposal and another set of volunteers who collected cardboard at the Post Office.

Mayor Mickey Clouse complained the cardboard collection site was unsightly and Duncan Disposal said that recycling was unprofitable … which it certainly was under Duncan Disposal management.

As community sentiment built up in Alpine against extending the Duncan Disposal contract who should appear on the horizon to lead the charge? Why, a new generation of recyclers. They communicated, organized and confronted both the council and Duncan Disposal in a knowledgeable and gentlemanly fashion.

The point of recycling in 1993 when the city got its permit for a new landfill was that the recycling of material kept a volume of trash out of the landfill and therefore extended the life of the landfill. For the past 10 years however, the trash talk around Alpine was that even if recyclable material was collected it was dumped into the pit because it was not economical even to store it if there was no market for the recycled stuff.

Any examination of a dumpster here in Alpine over the past 10 years confirmed that policy, no matter that the Texas state regulations required recycling for arid exempted landfills. Any dumpster any day held leaves and yard waste as well as cardboard and packaging materials.

Of more concern perhaps is the management of the landfill itself. One reason Alpine replaced Duncan Disposal with TDS is that the city had considerable difficulty getting information from Duncan Disposal.

For example, there is a second “cell” or garbage pit at Alpine’s landfill. The city has a state permit for only one cell. Where did the second cell come from? Our memory is somewhat rusty but there used to be a landfill cell in Marathon under Brewster County supervision.

Is it still there? Or did the garbage pit relocate to Alpine’s landfill?

Alpine’s landfill operates under what is known as an “arid exemption” which is a modification to the EPA regulations permitting landfills in that part of the western U.S. where rainfall is limited. Such landfills are restricted to only 20 tons per day of household garbage. Some observers believe it is possible that Duncan Disposal has been exceeding the limits on daily tonnage.

Whatever anyone suspects or knows the city of Alpine is responsible to the state for the operation of the landfill under the regulations. Both recycling and tonnage limitations are part of the arid exemption permit.

We know that because a citizen went to Austin to protest the city’s permit application in 1993 unless the city complied, which they belatedly did.

For the citizens of Alpine there was never much justification for privatizing trash collection and the management of the landfill. Ward 1 Representative Dale Mathis protested in 1994 the sale of the system. Mathis said that a referendum was required … but the rest of the city council ignored him. We should remember this experience when the hucksters start telling us what a good deal it will be to sell the natural gas company or the water system.

One day when the contract negotiations with DD and TDS were the hottest, I was struggling to close my dumpster lid as the truck was approaching. About a half block away the DD trash truck lifted a dumpster high in the morning sunlight. At the top of the lift the sun shined into the interior of the dumpster and the light came directly through the two-foot hole in the bottom of the dumpster.

During the first 10 years of privatized trash disposal in Alpine our neighborhood’s dumpsters, originally purchased by the city, and then bought by Duncan Disposal, were never replaced.

TDS has brought in bright new dumpsters. Such is progress in Alpine. •

(Also published by the Big Bend Sentinel of Marfa, Texas February 22, 2007.)