County’s casual garbage collection approach draws fire

Alex W. Sutherland | ALEX W. SUTHERLAND THE BELLINGHAM HERALD

• READ THE REPORTS
  
  To read the annual reports for garbage collectors in Whatcom County, click on the links below:

  • Sanitary Service Co.
  • Nooksack Valley Disposal
  • Blaine Bay Refuse
  • Point Roberts Recycling and Refuse
• WHO’S HAULING TRASH
  Garbage services in Whatcom County (except Waste Management of Washington, which handles sparsely populated areas in east Whatcom County):
  
  SANITARY SERVICE CO.
  Territory: Most of the county, except for Point Roberts and the north county. Total customers: 42,269. Number of commercial vehicles operating: 79.
  Total annual miles of those vehicles: 1,177,271.
  
  NOOKSACK VALLEY DISPOSAL
  Territory: From east of Blaine stretching to Columbia Valley, including Lynden. Total customers: 7,209. Number of vehicles operating: 13.
  Total annual miles of those vehicles: 195,234.
  
  BLAINE BAY REFUSE
  Territory: Birch Bay and Blaine. Total customers: 6,540. Number of vehicles operating: 7.
  Total annual miles of those vehicles: 141,659.
  
  POINT RECYCLING AND REFUSE
  Territory: Point Roberts. Total customers: 340 full time. Number of vehicles operating: 4.
  Total annual miles of those vehicles: 30,105.
  
  SOURCE: Company annual reports to state for 2007 (Point Roberts is from 2006 because the 2007 report was unavailable.)
  
  
• Point Roberts garbage service in financial, legal jeopardy

Some residents aren’t paying the garbage taxes that service customers pay — taxes that benefit everyone.

Some residents may be dumping their trash illegally.

Whatcom County government requires all households outside of cities to get garbage service, although, unlike other Washington counties, it lets them opt out of service if they formally ask permission.

But the county doesn’t enforce its law. And, according to an analysis by The Bellingham Herald, roughly 14,000 to 16,000 households are violating the law by not paying for service or getting that permission.

Some experts say garbage handling here could be improved. Arthur Wilkowski, owner of Point Recycling and Refuse, is one of them.

“By not having universal service, it means that everyone who uses garbage service and recycling service pays more because their neighbor isn’t contributing to the service,” Wilkowski said. The state Utilities and Transportation Commission sets garbage service rates in unincorporated areas, aiming to ensure rates stay low and companies see a reasonable profit.

The lack of county enforcement is one reason why Wilkowski’s company may soon die, he said. In isolated, sparsely populated Point Roberts, he doesn’t have enough customers to sustain a garbage and recycling company, he said. In 2006, his company’s net income was $18,700, not much more than a full-time minimum-wage fast-food employee earns.

Some experts say Point Roberts’ situation is unique because of its low population density and isolated geography. Countywide, the system is working well because there isn’t much illegal dumping. If it’s not broken, why try fixing it? they ask. Besides, Whatcom County Public Works leaders say, spending money to hire garbage cops may not be cost-effective.

The county’s Solid Waste Advisory Committee has wrestled with changing the system for years, and Wilkowski, a former committee member, says the fair solution is to require everybody to have garbage service. That’s already the case in the county’s seven cities.

But county elected leaders have declined to consider revamping the exemption rules. People should be free to choose, and given that freedom, they will choose the responsible action, said County Council member Barbara Brenner, who has an exemption herself.

“When you take away their options and get that in-your-face attitude, that’s when you start losing people,” she said.

But even Brenner says the system could be improved. The county doesn’t currently tell people about the exemption law, and she wants to use garbage taxes to send mailers to residents.

A UNIQUE SYSTEM

Whatcom County’s system, set up in 1990, is unique in Washington state. Households living outside a city must pay for garbage service or get an exemption by filing a promise with county government that they’ll dispose of their garbage “in an environmentally sound way.” That includes recycling, composting, self-hauling to the transfer station or sharing garbage service with somebody else.

Residents can’t burn or bury their garbage. Violating that promise could result in fines.

It’s difficult to know how many people aren’t following the rules, and it’s tougher because Public Works’ Solid Waste Division keeps exemptions in paper form and doesn’t have a database to track them.

Recently, Division Secretary Debbie Bailey examined each Point Roberts exemption individually. She found 588 valid ones. The stack of invalid exemption papers — from people who had moved or died — sat 7½ to 8 inches tall against her office wall. Point Roberts has roughly 1,500 permanent residents.

A county study estimated as many as 17,000 households aren’t on service, according to a 2003 letter from the Solid Waste Advisory Committee to the County Council.

But that number may be too high, said Ed Nikula, a Solid Waste Advisory Committee member and vice president of Sanitary Service Co. Statistics could be skewed because apartments are counted as separate housing units but need only one garbage service, and vacation homes shouldn’t be counted, he said.

A senior SSC driver recently told him an estimated 10 percent to 15 percent of unincorporated households in SSC’s territory aren’t on service, he said. That would be equivalent to about 2,100 to 3,200 households.

IS THERE A PROBLEM?

Some households, knowingly or unknowingly, violate the law.

County officials debate the enormity of that problem.

In 2003, the Solid Waste Advisory Committee wrote to the County Council expressing concern because “study after study has shown that households on curbside collection, in general, recycle considerably more than those that are not.” The idea is that if people are forced to pay for recycling service along with garbage, they’re more apt to use it.

“It’s an awful lot of recycling not happening, and the county and state are losing out on garbage taxes that support those very recycling programs for everyone,” Rodd Pemble, SSC’s recycling manager, wrote to The Bellingham Herald in an e-mail. He’s also a member of the Solid Waste Advisory Committee.

That could translate into a loss of an estimated $110,000 a year in tax revenue, according to the committee letter. That’s because garbage service companies pay an $8.50-per-ton garbage tax, but the tax isn’t collected when residents take their trash to a transfer station. In 2007, the tax yielded $872,464 for county government, which paid for everything from maintaining closed dumps to neighborhood garbage cleanups and community education, records show.

“In the cities, everyone’s paying, and in the county not everyone is paying, and that’s really not fair,” Wilkowski said.

And, according to the Solid Waste Advisory Committee letter, residents could be illegally dumping trash.

But that’s not a huge problem, and most people responsibly handle their garbage, said Jeff Hegedus, environmental health supervisor at the Whatcom County Health Department. His department responds to complaints of illegal dumping.

“When you drive around our county, it’s a pretty clean county, and there’s a reason for that, and it’s because the system, generally, is working,” he said. “Working with people often yields better results than issuing tickets because they’re not signed up for curbside.”

“We always have to ask ourselves: Is there something that’s broken that needs (to be) fixed?” he added.

It doesn’t look like it’s broken, said Calvin Den Hartog, general manager of Nooksack Valley Disposal. People who want to be on service are signing up for it.

“I think you’re still getting people on service that want to be on service for the convenience of it,” he said. And when the law was created, it did boost customers, which increased recycling, he said.

But the county doesn’t check people with exemptions to ensure they’re disposing of their garbage responsibly. Doing that could improve the system without forcing people onto service, which Den Hartog wouldn’t want to do because he wants willing customers.

“We want people to do the right thing, but we want them to be happy about doing the right thing, too,” he said.

Another factor is how people are reacting to high gas prices.

“Maybe with the cost of gas it’d be cheaper to have curbside pickup than for them to head to the transfer station,” said Greg Young, Ferndale city administrator and a Solid Waste Advisory Committee member.

Or maybe they’d do neither, Wilkowski said. To cut household costs, residents could cancel service and illegally dump their trash.

CHANGES DISCUSSED

Whatcom County’s Solid Waste Division has only two employees. They can’t police more than 40,250 unincorporated county households, officials say.

The Solid Waste Advisory Committee has talked about charging residents who file exemptions an annual fee — perhaps $10 or $20 — to pay for a staff position to enforce garbage law, Nikula said.

But hiring enforcement staff would have to be worth the extra cost.

“There has to be a value for that added investment,” Public Works Director Frank Abart said. Otherwise, you’re charging residents money to support more bureaucracy without a clear sense of the value.

County Council members told the Solid Waste Advisory Committee the same things in early 2004: Enforcing exemptions would cost too much.

And it’s not just county officials saying that.

“It’s great if it’s enforced, but it’s hard to do it because of the resources it would take,” Nikula said. Money is better spent handling violent criminals and traffic issues, as opposed to enforcing garbage law, he said.

Some say improvements don’t necessarily mean spending more money.

Brenner, also a member of the Solid Waste Advisory Committee, says county government should prioritize existing garbage tax money and send mailings to county residents informing them of the law.

“I think that people that aren’t on (service or an exemption) should just get notified to do one or the other,” she said. “We’ve never really done a decent exemption program to begin with.”

Wilkowski said the county should simply make garbage service mandatory for everybody.

It’s not that simple, Solid Waste secretary Bailey said. The county wouldn’t have leverage to enforce buying service because, unlike cities, it doesn’t provide utilities, so it couldn’t threaten to shut them off.

Besides, many residents probably would resist, Ferndale City Administrator Young said.

“Those people choosing not to subscribe to garbage, would they if they had to?” he asked. “People who live in the county are not all in this together.

“There are a lot of independent-minded people living out in the county.”