The Chittenden Solid Waste District (CSWD) is raising disposal fees by 22.5 percent in response to the dwindling flow of incoming trash and the financial fallout from its sale of contaminated compost.
It’s the second significant fee hike in four years — CSWD raised the price per ton by 25 percent in 2009.
The waste management or tipping fee, which funds a third of CSWD’s budget, is levied on each ton of waste sent to the landfill. It will increase from $22.06 to $27 starting Sept. 1.
If the trash haulers pass on the entire price hike to customers, CSWD estimates it will add another $4.45 onto the average household’s annual trash bill. The average bill is currently $408. A typical business producing about 10 tons of trash per year will have to pay approximately $50 more. Contractors and other companies that are dropping off debris will see their bill rise by about $20 per four-ton load.
CSWD is also increasing its compost fee by $2.50, bringing it up to $40 per ton. Households can drop off food scraps free, so the fee hike will only impact restaurants, cafeterias and other food-producing businesses.
General Manager Thomas Moreau said CSWD is a victim of its own success. People are cutting back on the amount of waste they produce — trash levels in Chittenden County are at a 13-year low, Moreau said — and that reduces one of its primary revenue streams. Chittenden County residents are producing an average of 3 pounds of a trash per day, compared to 3.5 pounds a decade ago.
Moreau likens the fee hike to the 6-cent gas tax that Gov. Peter Shumlin signed off on last month. Shumlin and lawmakers said the gas hike was necessary to make up for a decline in transportation revenues, which stems from the fact that people are driving less.
Jeff Myers owns Myers Containers and Recycling, one of the hauling companies that delivers trash to CSWD. Myers said the fee hike is just one of several pressures that haulers are juggling — they are also suffering the the impact of the gas tax and the closure of the Moretown Landfill. Myers said he still hasn’t determined the cumulative effect, but it’s likely he will have to pass on at least some of the cost to his customers.
The impact, though it sounds trivial at the household level, will be significant for haulers, Myers said. “Five dollars a ton affects our business drastically in the midst of the new fuel tax and a landfill closing.”
Myers said the average waste management fees for the other districts where his company operates are about $22 a ton on average.
Myers said he doesn’t see why the fee is necessary given that CSWD has roughly $5 million in reserves. “If our state had 100 million sitting in their checking account when they passed the 6-cent gas tax, people would be pretty upset.”
But according to Moreau, the reserve money has been earmarked for other projects and can’t be diverted to prevent the fee hike.
The CSWD Board of Commissioners made the decision May 22. Moreau said they had hoped to ward off the fee hike for another year, but they need the extra revenue now. Video and audio from the meeting can be found here.
The fee hike is also making up for what Moreau referred to as CSWD’s “compost fiasco.” CSWD has had to shell out money after selling compost contaminated with herbicides last July — they are down about $500,000 after reimbursing customers and paying for damages, and it’s missing another $350,000 due to lost revenue. About 500 gardeners purchased the affected compost, which spoiled their crops, but had no health impact.
The good news for CSWD is that it plans to resume selling compost by the end of the year. The district has pinpointed the more toxic of the two herbicides that were present in the compost — a chemical called aminopyralid— and have traced them back to a place called Jolley Stables, a horse farm in Colchester.
Last week, a host of growth tests came up aminopyralid-free, clearing CSWD to resume its compost production. Meanwhile, the Agency of Agriculture is investigating Jolley Stables’ hay sources, and if they unearth some wrongdoing, Moreau says CSWD may sue to recoup their costs.
Correction: The compost at CSWD was contaminated with herbicides not pesticides. Thomas Moreau clarified that CSWD will consider suing if the investigation unearths a wrongdoing, but it won’t necessarily choose that route. Story updated 9:45 p.m. May 25, 2013.
