Rumor has it some folks are hauling waste to Skagit County because dumping there is so much cheaper. After all, your momma told you you’d better shop around.

However, shopping out of county for the cheapest garbage disposal is illegal, according to county prosecutor Randy Gaylord.

Gaylord cites San Juan County code 8.12.010(B)(2), which states:

“It is unlawful for any person to dispose of controlled solid waste in San Juan County except at County-authorized disposal sites and in a manner authorized by San Juan County…”

Such “flow control” laws nation-wide help protect government utility monopolies from free-market shopping.

“Taking trash off-island is illegal – quite clearly so – but there’s no enforcement, so what are you going to do?” said council member Howie Rosenfeld. “Some people at public works say, ‘we’re going to enforce this’. Well, how much is that going to cost?”

The Town of Friday Harbor alone is exempt, and is now hauling its waste to a Skagit County transfer station, where it pays $89 per ton instead of San Juan County’s rate of $225 per ton ($335 for self-haulers).

But San Juan County offers free recycling, subsidized by garbage fees. So the Town of Friday Harbor drops its recycling – for free – at San Juan county transfer stations, and the county pays $36 per ton to dispose of it, according to utilities manager Ed Hale. As an incorporated town, Friday Harbor is exempt from flow control laws.

“Under the current plan I don’t think we can force the town to come to the county site,” said Rosenfeld. “Quite frankly, our system should be managed in such a way that we’re competitive… and if we’re not competitive we need to take a look at the way we’re doing business. I think there’s a level of urgency to bring stability to the solid waste system promptly so that it pays for itself.”

For further comparison, Island County charges $115 per ton for basic garbage.

The problem

With tipping fees at prohibitive levels and a likely $700,000 budget deficit by year’s end, the county council and Solid Waste Advisory Committee are urgently talking trash.

“Much of our costs aren’t tied to the amount of waste we receive,” said Hale, “paying for facilities and equipment and those sort of things.”

For example, he said, Skagit county processes roughly 100,000 tons of waste per year, drawing 8.8 million in revenue through just one transfer station, and without charging for recycling. San Juan County processed only 10,000 tons this year, yet supports three transfer stations. Revenue is expected to drop further without the Town’s garbage.

“If we still had 12,000 tons of garbage coming to us, we’d be in better shape. It wouldn’t be the prices that we have now,” said Hale.

And the situation appears to be only getting worse: “Our waste management contract expires 2011,” he said. “The indications are that (our charges) are going to go up significantly.”

Under the current contract, the county pays $72-72 per ton to Waste Management, Inc. for waste disposal in Eastern Oregon, plus ferry fees.

In 2009, solid waste fees brought in $2,389,504. Of that, 54% came from self-haulers, 32% from franchise haulers, and 14% from the Town of Friday Harbor. The county enacted rate increases effective July 1, 2010.

Drop-box operation is costly for San Juan

For San Juan Islanders, transporting truckloads of trash to the Orcas transfer station has become time-consuming and expensive since the conversion of the San Juan solid waste facility into a “drop-box” only facility on June 30.

That switch-over has proven problematic for unloading of San Juan Sanitation’s trucks, and has forced the company to dispose of those loads elsewhere, with Orcas being the most viable option.

“It used to take one-and-a-half hours to dump a big box; now it takes five hours,” said Calvin DenHartog, manager of San Juan Sanitation.

San Juan Sanitation would need to submit data on its increased costs to the Washington State Utilities and Transportation Commission in order to raise rates to reflect increased expenses. Other San Juan contractors, such as those in the building trades, could also be forced to pass that cost on to their clients.

Potential options

Mandatory pickup

Hale said it would be cheaper for county transfer stations to eliminate self-haul and service only big garbage trucks.

“If they can’t find a way to increase revenue for the program, there may be no other way than taking steps to create a system that shifts that cost,” he said.

Franchise hauler San Juan Sanitation pays a lower per-ton fee of $225 because its larger loads are more efficient to process. Such differential rates are standard practice in many counties.

Privatization of county solid waste disposal

“There has been discussion of taking it off the county’s hands,” said DenHartog. “Given the right parameters, I think there’s really enough opportunity there that multiple companies would jump at the chance.”

San Juan Sanitation currently has the exclusive right to pick up waste in the county and is considered a utility by the WUTC, which determines contract details like how much the company can charge and pickup schedules. If the utilities commission set terms that allowed for an attractive profit margin, private companies might be interested in taking the helm.

Charging for recycling

Up for hearing by the San Juan County Council on August 24 is a $3 entry fee that will apply to recycle-only customers.