Acton Climate Action Team |
Life After NESWC - some backgroundIn 1984, Acton joined with 25 other communities to form the North East Solid Waste Cooperative (NESWC), and contracted with Wheelabrator, Inc. to build and operate a Waste-to-Energy trash incineration facility in North Andover to dispose of the town's trash. Acton had recently capped its landfill on Rte 2, and needed an alternative waste disposal strategy. The contract turned out to be a very bad deal for the towns. Acton had to provide more trash to the incinerator than it generated itself, or face hefty fines (in addition to ever-rising trash fees). One way it dealt with this was to become licensed as a regional trash collection facility, in order to collect trash from private haulers to create the volume it needed to provide to the incinerator. This was a lot of work for the town, but it did eliminate the penalties, and in some years this brokerage system made money for the town that it used to offset trash costs. This high-volume operation also meant that the transfer station was open 6 days a week, and the number of households using Acton's transfer station leveled out at about 3000 households (the rest used privately contracted trash services). Acton has been planning for the happy day when it can leave the NESWC contract in September of 2005. It has been saving money from the trash brokerage business in a 'stabilization fund' to help in the transition. The Life After NESWC committee has been working since the summer of 2004 to research and evaluate options for the town, both for trash disposal, and for possible re-uses of the transfer station and landfill. In this report, we focus on the trash disposal options - transfer station and landfill reuse is an entirely different complicated and controversial topic. The town prepared two 'request for proposals' for trash disposal - one for operating the transfer station, another for providing curbside pickup. Bidders were invited to respond to one or both of the proposals. No one bid on operating the transfer station - it is apparently the opinion of potential operators that it is very difficult to make money operating a transfer station The only valid bid received on curbside pick-up was from Waste Management Inc. This large and growing international firm is the largest provider of trash services in Massachusetts. Through a series of mergers, it indirectly owns and operates the incinerator in North Andover. In its bid response, it added a requirement that the transfer station be closed - it did not want to compete with a transfer station. So, unless some additional option emerges - and none is expected in the short run- the town faces a choice of continuing to operate the transfer station itself, or offering curbside pickup service to its residents via a contract with Waste Management. For more information:
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