The de Blasio administration will seek legislation rather than act unilaterally to reform commercial waste collection, its sanitation commissioner said in an interview this week. She added that her agency would look for ways to keep some small carting companies in business.
“We need the City Council to pass a bill,” said Department of Sanitation Commissioner Kathryn Garcia. “I think we are at least five years away [from implementation]. We want to spend the next two years designing a plan.”
Her aim is to divide the city into zones which would each have one carter collecting commercial waste. A study released this week by Sanitation and the Business Integrity Commission, which regulates the industry, showed that a system of 11 such zones would reduce miles traveled by carters’ trucks by 49% to 68%.
Garcia said if carters do not win enough routes under the new regime to make use of their new trucks, they could sell the vehicles and recapture some of their investment. She added that while the study looked at a model of just 11 zones, she expects to have many more than that, including some small zones that midsize carters would have a chance to win.
“I don’t want to create a monopoly situation where only the big players are competitive. I think that does a disservice to the business community,” said Garcia. “I want to make sure it’s robust and still stays competitive.”
She said the zones would surely reduce operating costs because of collection efficiency, but that other costs would go up because of city policy decisions, such as recycling and worker-safety programs that would be required by the contracts the city would award. The commissioner’s expectation is that the savings and added costs would roughly balance out; she said in other cities that have switched to zone collection, costs went down in 52% of cases and up in 48%.
Critics of the plan point out that the study, which was done by private consultants, did not look at alternatives. Owners of carting companies say they are livid that their industry is suddenly being judged on vehicle-miles traveled, which has never been part of the strict regulatory regime under which it operates.
The city’s own trash collection system does not make limiting truck-miles a priority, the carters note. Nor has the city targeted any other industries whose vehicles crisscross the city for deliveries and service calls, even though most do so during daytime when traffic is heaviest. Carters typically make their runs late at night or during the wee hours of the morning, when streets are empty. Collectively, they account for only 0.1% of greenhouse-gas emissions in the city, a mayoral spokesman acknowledged.
While environmental justice advocates are cheering City Hall’s decision to push for zone collection, they are disappointed that it is not planning to steer commercial waste to the city’s marine transfer stations so it could be shipped out by barge or rail instead of by truck.
To read the full story, visit http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20160822/POLITICS/160829999/city-wont-go-it-alone-on-commercial-waste-plan.