City Trash Situation Serious

The machinations around the City of San Angelo's finally bidding trash and landfill services come with a serious backdrop.  The first consideration is, after waiting 34 years to seek competitive bids, time is short.

The remaining life stood at 34 years in 2006.  It fell to 11 years in 2013.  In seven years time the landfill's remaining life dropped by twenty three years.  That's a three year projected drop for every calendar year.  Using this rate of change the City's landfill would be exhausted within five years.

Trash dumped at the landfill increased dramatically the last two years.

Since 1989 one vendor, Trashaway-Republic Services, provided San Angelo's trash collection service and operated the City's landfill.  

The city broke the bidding into trash collection and landfill operation.  ConchoInfo's Jim Turner admonished staff for not sharing the evaluation criteria and methodology for scoring the two bids received, Trashaway-Republic and Texas Disposal Systems.  The criteria listed in city bids documents are:

There are large weighting differences between the two services.  "Financial Impact" garners up to 35 points in the landfill portion but only 15 points in trash collection.  Similarly, "Adherence to Specifications" is 30 points for waste collection but only 10 points for the landfill operation.

Jim Turner did a nice job of summarizing his numerous concerns regarding this process on ConchoInfo.  I don't plan to rehash any of his fine observations, but will add a few thoughts as I delve into this trashy matter.

Update 9-19-18:  Winning bidder Republic Services wants to back away from its recycling contractual commitments.   City staff and Republic will host public meetings on possible changes.