North Middleton residents encourage townships to take action against waste management

Many township residents described weeks of missed pickups and collections that occur at random and often go bad, with garbage scattered around the neighborhood from torn-open bags.

To add insult to injury, residents said, waste management also bills at inconsistent intervals and often sends overdue notices for bills that were paid long ago, adding unnecessary fees like surcharges to pay with checks. with.

“This is currently a health and safety issue,” said township resident Anna Bassom, describing weeks of stagnant waste beginning to spread in the township’s waterways. “They are in the process of turning our community into their own private dump.”

Waste management representatives attended Thursday’s meeting, as did other communities — the company is struggling to keep hiring in a tight labor market, and supply disruptions have made it difficult to maintain its fleet of garbage trucks. has made it.

But residents expressed concern that the company was dragging its feet in resolving issues that have persisted for months, as municipal officials were not taking action.

“I am very worried that you guys have allowed this to happen for so long,” Bassom said. “You act like your hands are tied. When we go to waste management, they tell us ‘Our hands are tied.'”

“It’s a slap in the face,” said township resident Lara Brenkel (who is married to Sentinel photographer Jason Malmont). “It is their responsibility to allot the manpower they have. If they can’t do that, we’ll have to find someone else.”

North Middleton Township’s waste issues are not isolated. Other townships in the county, such as Middlesex and South Middleton, have seen similar influx of complaints over the past several months.

The same has happened all over the country. news reports from places like Colombia, South Carolina, Antioch, Tennessee, and New Berlin, Wisconsin, indicate similar problems experienced in Cumberland County.

In most instances, residents cite a single timeline — the waste service that was originally contracted for advanced disposal was taken over by Waste Management after the purchase of the former in late 2020, at which point things nosedive. Started diving.

Same is the case with North Middleton. Like most municipalities, the township negotiates a multi-year contract with a denial settlement company to service the township at a fixed cost billed to each household. Originally, it was Advanced Disposal, and the contract was superseded with the acquisition by Waste Management.

North Middleton Supervisors chairman Robert Risinger said the township is in its fourth year of a five-year contract.

The relatively long duration of the contract allowed the township to close at $40 per quarter at lower costs, Reisinger said. When townships re-bid the contract next year, the prices are likely to more than double based on current prices.

At Thursday’s meeting, many residents said they would be less concerned about it; They pay $90 per quarter for a service that’s working, not $40 for a service that doesn’t exist at best and is actively harmful in some cases.

Tom Stang, municipal market manager for waste management for the area, told supervisors that his local team has “literally done everything we can” to provide the best service possible.

“This isn’t new to me or any of us,” Stang said. “It pisses me off too.”

Tad Brown, the local district manager for waste management, described the extended down times for broken trucks, saying, “We have parts issues, we have issues getting parts to vendors.”

The company has held several job fairs and raised salaries by about 25%, Brown said, but getting hired “isn’t easy and not many people knock on the door.”

But residents said this was not a problem in 2020 despite the impact of the pandemic – the variable is waste management.

A lot of this has to do with communication. One resident described being told by Waste Management that pickup was delayed for a week, and residents took their trash back inside, only to show up for a garbage truck the next day when there was nothing.

Another resident said that, according to his calculations, he paid more for his garbage service, noting that Waste Management sends different bills for the same thing. Another resident said he had received notice of an $8.50 monthly fee for using a check instead of allowing Waste Management to take payment directly from his bank account.

The issues behind the billing and communications problems were less clear, Brown said, but at least at street level, “I think we’re getting past some of the hunch you’ve experienced.”

Stang offered to return to the follow-up meeting, with some observers indicating they would hold him.

“I’ll take you up on my offer that you come back next month and let us know how well things are,” said supervisor James Hare.

Township Solicitor Zachary Rice said supervisors did not indicate how aggressively they wanted to pursue financial or legal measures, but they are available to them.

“There is a financing mechanism under contract for these instances,” said Rice, which would allow townships to manage $200 of waste per day per resident, for missed pickups that are not corrected within 24 hours.

The township can also move to cancel the contract, with Rice certifying in writing that waste management has stopped performing.

According to company records with the Federal Securities and Exchange Commission, Waste Management completed its merger of Advanced Disposal on October 30, 2020 with the purchase of Advanced Disposal’s remaining stock shares worth $4.65 million.

The company’s service problems are not the result of limited cash or low revenue. With stock buybacks for the first nine months of the year, compared with $402 million in the same period of 2020, Waste Management entered into a number of stock share repurchase agreements in 2021. As a result the company’s share price jumped.

Since taking over several landfill sites of Advanced Disposal, Waste Management has dodged agreements to contribute to Cumberland County’s funds for recycling and waste collection programs – a matter Brenkel notably stanged at the North Middleton meeting. told.

Those financial contributions are made voluntarily by disposal site owners as part of their agreements with counties in accordance with state-required capacity plans, which are required to be completed every 10 years under environmental regulations to ensure ensure that the waste will have a proper place to go, according to County Recycling Coordinator Justin Miller.

Under the county’s most recent capacity plan, available online, four landfills previously owned by Advanced Disposal agreed to contribute $5,000 annually to domestic hazardous waste collection and public education. Such funding is also used for electronics recycling, unwanted drug disposal and other public programs.

Miller said one of the landfills was sold to a third company, and the other three sites were retained by Waste Management. None of the four locations have yet provided their contributions for 2021, reducing the county’s program by $20,000.

In lieu of offering to sponsor any events, waste management agreements in county capacity contracts include lengthy letters from company attorneys objecting to the county’s legitimacy for such contributions.

“We haven’t really made any progress or clarity on whether they intend to continue” [the contributions],” Miller told The Sentinel on Friday.