ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, September 16, 1996 TAG: 9609160027
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DAN CASEY STAFF WRITER
Three valley governments will talk trash - beginning tonight - in a way that could have a long effect on who collects most of the Roanoke Valley's waste and where it ends up.
The Roanoke Valley Resource Authority is seeking permission from its three overseers - Roanoke, Roanoke County and Vinton - to give itself the power to collect commercial and residential trash in the three jurisdictions.
If the authority then chose to use that new power, which would require another round of public hearings, some believe it would save taxpayers millions of dollars per year through a regional system. Or, it could create a huge new government agency and wind up as a costly public boondoggle.
Another option is that the authority could change its charter but never implement the new powers.
"It's a puzzle with a lot of interlocking pieces, and it could remain exactly where it is with the city doing their own thing and the county doing their thing and the town of Vinton doing their own thing," said Bill Rand, Roanoke County's director of general services and a board member on the resource authority.
The first public hearing on the issue will be tonight at 7 before Roanoke City Council. Tuesday, the question moves to Vinton Town Council for a 7 p.m. public hearing. On Sept. 24 at 7 p.m., it goes before the Roanoke County Board of Supervisors. Views of residents are welcome at all three hearings.
The stakes are huge, both for the governments and their taxpayers: at least $42 million. That's the amount the three jurisdictions invested in the Smith Gap landfill and the Roanoke Valley trash transfer station back in the early 1990s.
The governments borrowed the money to build both facilities, and they pay the loan off from tipping fees the resource authority charges for trash dumped after being carried by train to Smith Gap.
About 60 percent of the trash comes from residential collections the three governments do separately now. The other 40 percent is generated by commercial haulers, who dump 85,000 tons of trash at the transfer station annually.
Part of the problem is that in the last month, one of the valley's major commercial trash haulers began trucking waste to its own landfill in Tennessee. A spokesman for Browning Ferris Industries says the resource authority's $55 per ton tipping charge is far too high, and it's cheaper to truck the garbage more than 140 miles than to dump it here.
If the other commercial haulers begin trucking their waste elsewhere, the resource authority would face a huge shortfall in the revenue it needs to pay off the loans for construction of the landfill.
That could require tax increases, said Kit Kiser, Roanoke's director of utilities and operations, who also sits on the resource authority board.
So the authority wants the ability to compete with the private haulers - BFI, Waste Management of Virginia and Virginia Container Service - for their lucrative business picking up trash from area businesses and industries.
"We are positioning the resource authority to protect the interests of the residents of this valley," Bob Johnson, chairman of the Roanoke County Board of Supervisors, said during an interview last month. "This is a self-preservation move in my opinion on behalf of the city and the county and the town of Vinton."
"We may need to get into commercial waste collection in order to protect our revenue stream, in order to prevent too much trash from being taken to another landfill," Kiser said. "The jurisdictions have invested $42 million in a system. We have debt on it and operating costs that all have to be paid."
Not surprisingly, the commercial haulers don't think much of the idea.
"The commercial trash business is being provided for very well right now by the private sector," said Chris Rooney, division president and general manager of Waste Management of Virginia-Blue Ridge. Although the company intends to keep supporting the landfill, competitive pressures could force it to consider trucking its waste out of the valley also. Rooney said Waste Management would "wait and see."
"Our view is, it's a step in the wrong direction," said BFI marketer Mike Mee. "In the early 1980s, the city of Roanoke got [mostly] out of commercial collections and allowed private haulers to compete for the business. The result was increased competition, lower prices and better service for customers in the city of Roanoke. To think a government entity can operate better than the private sector is not wise."
To that, Kiser responded that it sounds like private haulers fear competition - the very thing they trumpet.
"Wouldn't you say they have a prejudiced view? If it's competition, it would be a level-ground competition. If you're a businessman, you have the choice of where your trash would go and who would collect it," Kiser said.
Even some City Council members have misgivings over the question.
"Does government want to get involved in another operation?" asked Councilman Nelson Harris. "It looks to me like government has enough on its plate without getting involved in another operation, that being commercial waste hauling."
The other question revolves around residential collections. Allowing the resource authority to collect trash from homes could be the first step in a regionalized trash collection system and represent a victory for those who have pushed regional cooperation for decades.
The localities believe they could save money through economies of scale. Currently, all of their collection systems operate independently.
The idea is that rather than having the county collecting in its doughnut-shaped locality and the city and Vinton collecting in the doughnut's holes, the whole area could be lumped together and trash collection areas could be redone in pie-like slices. Rand said that could reduce the number of trucks required.
"If we become independent of the political boundaries, there is money to be saved," Rand said. He could not estimate how much.
Even those savings are in question from the private haulers, however.
In recent months, BFI has aggressively gone after city residential collections, running a lobbying and public relations campaign urging the public and council members to contract out city trash collection.
In part, that effort caused City Council to put off beginning city collections early next year with one-armed bandit-type garbage trucks. A committee of four council members and three administrators is now studying whether to go private, cooperate regionally, or both.
Staff writer Christina Nuckols contributed to this story.
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