The good news that Augusta’s landfill had finally passed an inspection by the Georgia Environmental Protect Division was tempered Friday by other challenges in waste management for the Garden City.
Augusta Engineering Director Hameed Malik said the commission decision to combine Engineering and Environmental Services, which oversees garbage pickup and the landfill, last year had been a challenge.
“It was not an easy task, but I took it in, so I’m committed to deliver the expectations, but I do need support of this body to make it work,” Malik said, before presenting a list of action items at a work session. The items included rate increases for haulers, a new waste collection contract, taking a hard look at how enterprise fund revenue is being spent and more.
City Engineering Manager Walt Corbin, who has overseen day-to-day operations at the landfill since the merger, said scoring a “100” on the inspection was an arduous task that may be hard to repeat.
“The amount of effort that (Stormwater Services Manager Oscar Flite) and I both had to expend to get to that 100 far exceeded what it should have been,” Corbin said. “We’re still struggling there to stay in compliance.”
The EPD complaints, which dated to 2019, centered on landfill cells being improperly covered and leaking contaminated liquids into waterways. Augusta spent $2 million in 2022 alone in the effort to address them, Malik said.
Director: Let haulers provide recycling, not city
Since Augusta changed to once-weekly garbage pickup with mandatory recycling in 2013, it’s been in a contract with two waste haulers, which later began using a handful of smaller haulers as subcontractors. The city’s contract with Waste Management, which bought former hauler Advanced Disposal in 2020, expires at the end of 2023.
Malik said among his recommendations for the new contract are for the city to get out of the recycling business. Only 30% of Augusta’s approximately 64,000 garbage customers use it, he said. The program is losing money and is locked in a lease of a facility near Goshen where recyclable materials must be taken, before city staff haul it to the landfill, he said.
Mayor Pro Tem Bobby Williams said a segment of the community will “want to fight you” if Augusta eliminates curbside recycling. Malik said instead, it should require the contract haulers to offer recycling as a service to homeowners.
“My thought is the city should not offer recycling, but it should be a requirement to the contractor to offer recycling,” he said.
Increase hauler fees, end volume discounts
Malik said since the new contract will likely come with a fee hike, he did not recommend raising the current $310.50 annual residential collection fee.
What is needed is for Augusta to increase the fees it charges contract haulers to drop waste at the landfill and quit “subsidizing” its own contractors by offering generous volume discounts, he said.
While it costs Augusta roughly $30 per ton to operate the landfill, it bills Coastal and Recycling $26.50 per ton if they bring in more than 5,000 tons, he said. It charges Waste Management just $17 per ton if the company brings in 5,000 to 10,000 tons, he said.
Malik recommended raising the base rate per ton to $38.50. He also recommended ending a discounted rate for compressed natural gas, which the 2013 contract required haulers to use in their trucks.
Staffing the landfill continues to be an issue, Malik said. It’s specialized, heavy industrial work, and “not everybody can really perform that function,” he said.
Is solid waste revenue being properly spent?
Malik’s written presentation Friday made repeated mentions of the need to scrutinize how solid waste revenue is actually being spent. Asked to elaborate, he spoke in general terms.
“You’ve got to look at the revenue generated by this operation, how it’s being utilized and what functions it’s going to,” he said. “If adjustment needs to be made it needs to be made.”
The city bills and pays itself an allocation from all funds besides the general fund to cover “overhead,” such as insurance, Finance Director Donna Williams said, when called on to speak.
Malik said he’d submitted written concerns about the spending during the budget process.
‘I’d ask for his termination’
The work session ended on a tense note, after Commissioner Ben Hasan questioned Malik about the spending and stressed the need to include local small haulers as the city began negotiations with Waste Management.
Hasan, who leaves office this year, initially championed the consolidation of Engineering and Environmental Services under Malik.
Malik said he’d done his best to correct Environmental Services operations, but “if this body feels like I need to move on from that operation, I’m fine with that, too.”
“So if you don’t have your way, you just leave?” Hasan said. “If he’d said to one of y’all what he said to me, I’d asked for his termination.”
