DATE: Thursday, August 28, 1997             TAG: 9708280547

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY SCOTT HARPER, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: CHESAPEAKE                        LENGTH:   72 lines

PRIVATE TRASH COMPANIES WAGING WAR, SPSA SAYS THE AGENCY'S NEW LEADER COMES OUT WITH BARRELS BLAZING.

Private trash companies for months have been waging a smear campaign that aims to kill the Southeastern Public Service Authority, the new chairman of the 20-year-old waste and recycling agency charged Wednesday.

In a fiery speech in front of several trash company executives, G. Conoly Phillips made no bones about his strategy in the ongoing war for control of the lucrative garbage market in South Hampton Roads: Take no prisoners.

At stake in this increasingly hostile war are answers to such basic lifestyle questions as: Who picks up my garbage? Where does it go? And how much do I pay for all this? Better known by its acronym, SPSA serves Virginia Beach, Norfolk, Chesapeake, Portsmouth, Suffolk, Franklin and Isle of Wight and Southampton counties.

``In the past, SPSA has been reluctant to enter into the fray and defend itself,'' said Phillips, a Norfolk city councilman and well-known car dealer. ``I can assure you that during my time as chairman, I plan to take the `kick me' sign off SPSA.''

His blunt comments stunned some company officials, who huddled in a hallway afterward to compare notes and make furious phone calls to their home offices.

``I was astonished, quite frankly,'' said Philip F. Abraham, a Richmond-based lobbyist for several firms, including Browning-Ferris Industries. ``A lot of what he said is simply untrue. We have never said - never - that we want to put SPSA out of business. We only want an opportunity to provide services where our costs are lower.''

In blasting private competitors, Phillips officially broke with a grin-and-bear-it attitude that SPSA has adopted since a group known as ``Virginians for Effective and Efficient Public Service'' started demanding that private companies do more of the hauling, collecting and disposing of local trash.

Funded solely by waste companies, VEEPS has persuaded dozens of local business and political leaders to question whether a government-run authority is needed any longer. Privatization, they have argued, is the wave of the future.

But in his first meeting as SPSA's elected chairman, Phillips said VEEPS has only made inroads ``through heavy lobbying and questionable public relations and media relations tactics.''

He called the VEEPS message ``a siren song,'' noting that SPSA is a recognized national leader in waste management. He promised to ``respond factually and aggressively to each issue that is brought before us.''

``The haulers' goals appear to be clear,'' Phillips said. ``Destroy public confidence in SPSA, break it up, and then take over its profitable activities.''

His one-year term will certainly be crucial for SPSA. The agency, launched as a regional cooperative in 1977, will run out of landfill space in about three years and must make decisions now about its future.

For one, SPSA must decide whether to build a $19 million expansion to its regional landfill in Suffolk. Called Cell Five, the project is being fought by VEEPS as a waste of money, since largely empty, private landfills are available miles away on the Peninsula.

To quiet this criticism, SPSA agreed to delay Cell Five until private companies could bid on taking over local trash-disposal duties. The companies have until Oct. 21 to submit a proposal. Dozens are expected to bid - even though many company officials believe that the bidding is just lip service and that Cell Five will be built regardless.

In addition, Phillips also must oversee another major transition. The only executive director that SPSA has had, Durwood Curling, is expected to retire in December.

Curling, a veteran of local government and politics, has been instrumental in creating a waste system from scratch that now includes curbside recycling, hazardous waste collection, composting and methane recovery. ILLUSTRATION: AT STAKE

Private waste disposal companies are vying for more of the market in

Hampton Roads, which is served by SPSA.

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