Alamance County’s leaders may be about to scrap the longstanding policy that gives certain trash haulers the exclusive right to pick up curbside trash and recyclables in unincorporated parts of the county.
Alamance County’s solid waste ordinance allows companies to obtain franchises to provide both garbage and recycling pickup in each of three areas outside the county’s cities and towns.
One of these zones, which generally extends south from the interstate and west from the Haw River, is presently served by GFL Environmental, which formerly did business as Waste Industries. The other two zones lie to the east and northwest of the county’s urbanized core and are currently the sole province of Republic Services.
The policy which has allowed these two firms to carve up the county came under fire on Monday when Alamance County’s board of commissioners received a staff-level proposal to allow both of these companies to retain their current domains for up to five additional years.
Chris Gustin, the county’s solid waste director, informed the commissioners that these staff recommendations emerged from an intensely competitive bid process that saw GFL and Republic fend off five corporate rivals that also want to do business in Alamance County.
As part of this state-dictated process, each bidder had to submit the proposed fees that they’d be willing to honor within their desired service areas for at least the next two calendar years. Gustin added that every competitor had to send quotes for both recycling and trash in spite of the fact that only 3,500 of the county’s unincorporated households subscribe to curbside recycling, as opposed to the 13,000 that receive garbage collection. The county’s solid waste manager went on to credit this equal emphasis on recycling to a policy that tries to promote this alternative to the proverbial dump.
“We have a recycling ordinance in the county, and we mandate recycling [as part of a franchisee’s menu of services],” he went on to explain to the commissioners. “So, this franchise agreement necessitates recycling…and our recommendation considers the combined rate for garbage and recycling.”
A seven-way scramble
According to Gustin, GFL and Republic only submitted bids for the parts of the county that they already serve, and in each of these areas, they came in with the lowest combined rates for both trash and recycling.
In GFL’s case, the company has offered residents of its southwesterly zone a rate of $20.95 a month to pick up their trash and $11.55 a month for recycling. Meanwhile, Republic has agreed to provide these same services within its two zones for $22.00 and $9.50 a month, respectively. In each instance, the combined sum of these quotes amounts to exactly $31.50.
Under the terms of its franchise agreements, the county requires waste haulers to cart household garbage to Alamance County’s landfill off of Austin Quarter Road. Meanwhile, recyclables end up at a privately-owned sorting facility – the closest to Alamance County being a materials hub that Republic operates in Greensboro.
Gustin told the commissioners that, in awarding each franchise, the county considers factors such as a company’s experience and past performance, its manpower, the quality of its fleet, and its financial stability. Yet, the primary criterion for selection is price – which, as Gustin repeatedly stressed, is based on the combined rates a contractor offers for trash and recycling.
In addition to GFL and Republic, the county’s solid waste franchises also attracted submissions from Anchor Disposal, Meridian Waste, Carolina Trash & Septic, Waste Pro, and Liberty Waste Solutions. Unlike the incumbent franchisees, these five challengers bid for all three of the county’s service areas, while Waste Pro and Carolina proffered additional, reduced quotes to serve multiple areas.
In a couple of cases, these rival waste haulers managed to undercut the current franchisees with their proposed rates for garbage collection by itself. But none of the rivals could touch the combined sum of $31.50 that GFL and Republic had proposed for both of the required services.
According to data that Gustin shared with the commissioners, the lowest combined sum that any challenger could muster was $33.00 a month, which Carolina Trash & Septic had offered if it obtains franchises in multiple zones. Meanwhile, Anchor Disposal was close on Carolina’s heels in its combined bid for the eastern part of the county, where it offered to pick up both trash and recycling for $33.15 a month.
In addition to the competitive edge that Republic gets from its recycling facility in Greensboro, both of the incumbents have the further advantage of being large, multi-state companies that can reap benefits from their economies of scale. Republic, which is headquartered in Phoenix, and GFL, which phones home to Miami Beach, nevertheless have local offices within Alamance County.
Waste Pro is, likewise, a multi-state concern with operations across the Southeastern U.S. Anchor, by contrast, is a smaller firm with a port of call in Clayton, NC; Meridian operates out of Charlotte; and Liberty appears to confine itself to about a dozen North Carolina locations. Meanwhile, Angier-based Carolina Trash & Septic, which prides itself on being “locally-owned,” dispatched two of its brother-and-sister co-owners to Alamance County on Monday.
Trash talk from the podium
Although it would seem that the incumbents had won their staff-level endorsements on the merits, it didn’t prevent the competitors from raising a hue and cry when the commissioners pored over the franchise agreements on Monday.
Representatives of several competing firms ultimately appeared before the county’s governing board during a designated public comment period that kicked off that evening’s proceedings.
Particularly aggrieved by the staff’s recommendation was Tim Herman of Anchor Disposal, who touted his company as the low bidder in the three service areas – based presumably on the standalone rates for garbage collection.
“Price is the number one evaluation [factor] in this [request for proposals],” Herman went on to remind the commissioners. “This bid process produced two low bidders, and staff is recommending neither of them. So, what’s the point of a fair and competitive bid process if the best results get rejected.”
[Story continues below chart on bids for recycling and trash pickup in rural areas of the county.]
The staff’s recommendations also took some hits from Reid Sasser of Meridian Waste, who insisted that his company had submitted the “lowest competitive” bid for one part of the county by virtue of the top-quality service it offers its clients.
“The bid proposal we put together offers rate reduction and quality, on-time collection to the citizens as well as new trucks and new containers,” he added. “You get what you pay for, and the incumbent’s lower rates do not guarantee the new equipment, better service, or satisfied citizens.”
Sasser and Herman dropped various hints about alleged customer dissatisfaction with Republic and GFL Environmental. These claims were later reiterated by Jessica Simmons, a resident of eastern Alamance County who also serves as the head of the county’s library committee.
During Monday’s comment period, Simmons took direct aim at Republic over its “one-star reviews” on the Internet – a bar that she said is so low that “you barely have to step over it.” She went on to propose that the only way to ensure their unincorporated constituents aren’t stuck with waste haulers they loathe is for the commissioners to revise the policy that determines who can pick up their waste.
“I think we need to open this up to more competition,” Simmons told the commissioners. “The only option that we’re provided, aside from using the sole vendor in our zone, is to haul over our own trash [to the county landfill].”
The commissioners also heard a vigorous defense from Chris Wilson of Republic Services, who recounted his firm’s 22-year-long history with Alamance County.
“We do approximately 38,000 drive-bys a month in Alamance County,” he added, “and I can count on one hand the number of complaints we’ve had this year.”
Wilson’s assertion was backed up by Gustin, who acknowledged that neither of the county’s incumbent waste haulers has generated many complaints during the current calendar year.
“My office has received three complaints in the last nine months,” he added, “and three were resolved within a day or two of the complaint coming into my office.”
Kicking the can down the road
The commissioners didn’t hear from any residents on Monday who shared any first-hand complaints about either of the county’s two incumbent waste haulers.
All the same, Steve Carter, the vice chairman of Alamance County’s commissioners, made vague allusions to disgruntled customers who’ve personally contacted him about their curbside collection. Meanwhile, commissioner Ed Priola suggested some potential policy changes to ensure better customer service, including an option to enable unincorporated residents to contract their own waste collection with a company that doesn’t hold the franchise within their zone.
“I think we need to consider more carefully our competitive model for waste management in the county,” the commissioner went on to sum up.
As their discussion continued, the commissioners also struck on the idea that they could do away with the franchise system entirely.
Gustin said that some counties are able to serve the needs of unincorporated residents without parceling out these sanctioned monopolies.
“However, those counties have a large number of convenience centers [where residents can drop off trash or recycling] located throughout the county, and Alamance County only has two in the northern part of the county.”
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In the meantime, Alamance County’s attorney Rik Stevens warned that the commissioners would have to invest both time and effort into any potential policy change.
“We would need to amend our solid waste ordinance,” he added. “It could have some impact on the companies that have bid…We would essentially be changing the playing field, and they may not choose to compete [anymore].”
Kelly Allen, the chairman of Alamance County’s commissioners, tried to goad her colleagues to avoid this sort of upheaval and, instead, vote on the recommendations that the solid waste director presented. Under state law, the commissioners must approve these proposals in two separate “readings” before they can take effect, and Gustin had encouraged the commissioners to take action sooner rather than later to give the franchise recipients time to meet the terms of their agreements before January 1, 2027.
In response to Allen’s misgivings, Carter insisted that the commissioners could very well reject any proposed policy change that the county’s administrators put forward. Commissioner Sam Powell went on to add his support to Priola and Carter’s push to have staff scramble up some ideas, which Stevens pledged to have ready for the board’s consideration by the third Monday in October.
