Borough eyes landfill overhaul

MAT-SU — Mat-Su Borough officials are doing some trash-talking.

In an effort to revamp the Borough’s trash-handling procedures, the Borough assembly has directed the solid waste division:

• to hire an environmental technician as suggested by a recent audit of the department,

• to consolidate some of the transfer sites in outlying areas used to collect garbage for bulk delivery to the central landfill in Palmer, and

• to put out a solicitation for bids from contractors to possibly take over operation of the landfill.

The second recommendation makes minor changes to the transfer site system, Public Works Director Keith Rountree said. The Sunshine site will be closed altogether, the Trapper Creek site will be run by contract with a local business and the person who runs those sites will take over for a recently retired worker in Willow. All the other transfer sites — Big Lake, Sutton, Willow, Butte, Talkeetna and Long Rifle — will continue to operate as they have in the past, Rountree said,

The Borough is already moving to make these changes, which could potentially save more than $100,000 a year, he said.

As for the third recommendation, assembly members “want to give the private sector one more shot,” Borough Manager John Duffy said. A “beefed-up” bid package substantially different from the one used in the past will be solicited.

Moki Tew of Tew’s Excavation is the last private contractor to hold that contract for any meaningful length of time when he ran the landfill for five years. That contract ended a year ago and the Borough is now running the landfill.

Tew said the new bid is a joke.

“I heard that it’s all new equipment, all new this, all new that,” he said. “They’re wasting your time, my time. There is no way that a private contractor can come in there.”

Tew also said that requirements for licensing and insurance are onerous and show what he calls a double standard at the Borough, which doesn’t require the same from its own employees.

Rountree said those licensing and insurance requirements come from the state and are necessary in running a landfill. The Borough operators there now have the requisite certifications.

As to the requirements that equipment be new, Rountree said only one piece, a compactor, has to be brand new. The rest has to be model year 2005 or better with complete maintenance records. He said the auditor reports that to reach the stated goal of having the garbage compacted to 1,000 pounds per cubic yard, the contractor will need a new compactor.

Most of the major changes to the contract, Rountree said, “were based upon the old contract and then some of the lessons learned from the issues that we ran into trying to implement that contract.”

Tew said he’s seen a pattern of poor management at the landfill, as evidenced, in part, by the process of creating a new garbage cell. The landfill is full or close to it, and he said the Borough has been limping along trying to build a new place to put trash.

Rountree said, to some extent, that’s true.

“We are close to capacity on the existing cell,” he said. “I’m hoping that we will have that in place so we don’t run into extra issues with space,” Rountree said, adding that would mean having to haul garbage to Anchorage.

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@front-iersman.com or 352-2270.