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News Archive:

At the Monday May 9 Board of Selectmen meeting, the selectmen reviewed the :"Life After NESWC" committee recomendations listed below, and took citizens input (including some from Jim Snyder-Grant of the Acton Climate Action Team).

They decided to go ahead and bring a small number of warrants to a June 13 Special Town meeting, including

  1. A trial of a Hybrid Pay-As-You Throw system for the Acton Transfer Station
  2. An option of restoring 5-day per week service at the transfer station.

Poll results from the 2 vs. 5 day polling are here.

Older News:

At the Wednesday May 4 Life After NESWC meeting, the committee unanimously voted to approach the selectmen with these recommendations:

  1. Sign up for 9 months of trash disposal in North Andover at $64/ton.
  2. Try out a hybrid Pay As You Throw system at the transfer station starting in September 2005 to run for 9 months. Current estimated prices: $50 for a sticker, $1.50 for 30 gallon bag, $0.75 for a 15 gallon bag.
  3. Cancel the June 2005 special town meeting.
  4. Discuss next steps with trash at the April 2006 town meeting.
  5. Stop negotiating for now with Waste Management on curbside. Consider future RFPs for curbside operations in 2006.
  6. Keep the transfer station open 2 days a week starting July 2005, as already planned, but poll users in November '06 or so about the pros & cons of raising prices to support a 5-day a week operation. If the poll results were overwhelming, consider going to 5-days a week as as soon as possible.
  7. Delay big changes to recycling for now until after the 9 month trail. And if, as expected, the town gets a written confirmation on not needing capping:
    • Possibly consider a new RFP for just operating the transfer station.
    • Possibly consider a new RFP for just trash disposal.

The reasons the committee were all moved in this direction were varied, but they included the following factors:

All thought that a PAYT system was either inevitable or a good idea (some thought both).

John Murray, assistant town manager and town staff assigned to the "Life After NESWC" committee,  proposed delaying making a final decision now about what sort of PAYT system because the town does not have enough information:

  1. For curbside pricing, negotiations with Waste Management to get PAYT pricing have been slow and challenging.
  2. For pure Pay As You Throw pricing at the transfer station, John would want to know more precisely how much trash the residents throw out at the TS. That's hard to tell now because it's all mixed in with our trash brokerage business, which stops July 1.

Hybrid pricing at the transfer station for the next 9 months means pricing can be done so that the town can roughly break even no matter what the volume is, because the sticker price can be set to meet the fixed costs & the bag price can be set to meet the disposal per ton cost.

Once we have nine months of real data, then John feels the town can more confidently consider a pure pay-as-you-throw system, with only a per-bag charge for trash and no sticker fee. There were some advantages, financial and environmental, to a pure PAYT system over a hybrid system that committee members acknowledged, but because of the unknowns about volume it was considered too risky at this time.

The discussion about 2 days versus 5 was complex, with pros and cons for each. One factor in recommending 2 days was that town hall has heard no concerns from citizens about a 2-day a week system. It would cost a bit less than $15 per household in annual sticker fees to go from a 2-day system to a 5-day system.