Southeast communities talk trash, looking to save money

It doesn’t matter the value of what people toss in the trash, it’s all expensive to ship out of town to a landfill.

The borough sends out about 60 to 65 40-foot-long containers filled with trash every year, at a cost budgeted for this year at $360,000. That’s up from $239,000 just three years ago.

Wrangell is not alone in paying increasingly higher costs for hauling and dumping trash at an approved landfill in eastern Washington state. The trash travels by barge and then rail to the landfill. Petersburg has been hit with similar price increases, and both the city and the borough in Ketchikan have raised solid waste service fees for residences and businesses.

Wrangell’s trash hauling contract with Arizona-headquartered Republic Services expires next year. The borough has the option of a one-year renewal with the national trash hauling firm, timed to coincide with the expiration of similar contracts in Petersburg and Ketchikan, said borough Public Works Director Tom Wetor.

The effort to match the contract expiration dates was on purpose, so that Southeast communities might be able to negotiate together for better rates, Wetor said.

The cost of getting rid of garbage was on the agenda for the annual meeting of the Southeast Conference last month in Ketchikan.

“The last 15 years, I’ve been able to talk trash pretty well,” Aaron Marohl, assistant Public Works director in Petersburg, said in his presentation at the conference.

“Waste disposal costs have increased dramatically over the past few years,” he said, highlighting Wrangell and Petersburg as two costly examples.

The Southeast Alaska Solid Waste Authority is looking for answers, Marohl said. He explained that earlier this year it received a $500,000 grant from the federally funded Denali Commission to study whether “there are more economical and environmentally friendly solid waste disposal alternatives.”

Options might include diverting more of the trash into composting operations and recycling, reducing the volume that goes into a landfill, he said.

There are about 30 active — and permitted — solid waste collection sites around Southeast, said Zach Gianotti, with the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation. About half of the garbage is shipped out of state and half is buried in Southeast, with the largest landfill in Juneau. Ketchikan also buries some of its waste.

Developing a new landfill to meet environmental standards could cost at least $20 million, Wetor said.

The Southeast Alaska Solid Waste Authority started up in 2009 with Wrangell one of its four founding members and has since grown to include nine communities. Wetor is vice chair of the board.