On April 13, 2007, West Virginia Deputy Chief Administrative Law Judge Ronnie Z. McCann found that “Waste Management has artificially created or contributed to a solid waste disposal crisis.”
Many of us will recall about three years ago when our trash was regularly left curbside for several days at the end of each month. According to Waste Management, Inc., which owns our local landfill in Hedgesville, the landfill was reaching its legal trash limit each month and could accept no more. You see, the state of West Virginia licenses and regulates all landfills in the state.
The Hedgesville landfill, known as LCS, was licensed to accept no more than 9,999 tons of waste per month. Once that limit was reached the landfill either had to close down for the rest of the month or seek a temporary stay from that weight limit from the State. The Eastern Panhandle regularly surpassed that limit during the summer of 2004 and into 2006, which meant Waste Management intermittently closed the LCS landfill.
To alleviate this monthly cycle of closing and re-opening, Waste Management sought permission to allow LCS to accept between 10,000 and 30,000 tons of trash per month on a permanent basis. This request triggered the local governmental agency in charge, the Berkeley County Solid Waste Authority, to set about investigating the suitability of increased tonnage going to the LCS site.
This all sounds above-board enough until you understand that Waste Management owned not only the LCS landfill, but it also owned Waste Management of Shenandoah Valley (WMSV)—the single hauler licensed by the state to collect and dispose of residential and commercial trash in the Eastern Panhandle.
As with landfills, the state also licenses and regulates companies that truck trash and recycling materials on our public roads. Once licensed, a hauler is solely responsible for regular and consistent solid waste removal. Failure to do so is a breach of the hauler’s permit. Closure of the local landfill is no excuse. Why? Because haulers are free to dispose of waste at any landfill that will allow them access. This means WMSV was under no obligation to dump at LCS. Indeed between 1991 and 1997, WMSV transported all trash it collected from the Eastern Panhandle to a landfill in Greencastle, Pa. Waste Management told our local authorities in the early 1990s that the Greencastle facility had enough capacity for Eastern Panhandle waste for 30 or more years.
So why only 10 years later would WMSV leave our garbage on the street rather than take it to Greencastle as it had been? Well, in 1998, its parent company, Waste Management, purchased the Hedgesville landfill facility. Accordingly, from that time onward it became significantly cheaper to haul to nearby LCS rather than truck clear to Pennsylvania. Consequently, LCS started filling up at a rapid pace.
Now this low simmer launched into a full boil when in the fall of 2003 Waste Management informed our local authorities that the Greencastle facility no longer had capacity for our waste and that the 9,999 monthly tonnage limit at LCS would have to be raised in order to accommodate the trash that the Greencastle facility could no longer accept. They even produced a letter from the managers of the Greencastle landfill bluntly citing a lack of capacity for Eastern Panhandle trash. Problem was, Waste Management also owned the Greencastle landfill. Worse yet, Pennsylvania regulatory authorities told the Berkeley County Solid Waste Authority that not only was there plenty of capacity at the Greencastle facility but that, in fact, the facility was underutilized.
The question we have to ask here is why. Why would Waste Management present misinformation to regulatory authorities, engage in unethical and potentially illegal behavior, and leave the public high and dry?
The answers are quite simple, really. The more waste a landfill can take in, the more money it makes. Landfills charge haulers by the ton to dump at their facilities. Accordingly, the more trucks Waste Management can encourage to dump at the Hedgesville site, the more money it makes. Couple this with the cost of transportation savings realized by directing WMSV trucks to haul the shorter distance to Hedgesville rather than Pennsylvania, and suddenly Waste Management makes out handsomely on both the front and back end of the waste service business in the Eastern Panhandle. The result for the public? A trash crisis fabricated in order to dupe us into pushing for higher tonnage limits at LCS in order to get the trash off our streets.
These are the facts upon which Judge McCann based his finding that Waste Management had artificially created a crisis. But the problem does not end as simply as that. About 10 months ago Waste Management sold its exclusive permit to haul residential waste and recycling to another hauler, Apple Valley. In early 2007 Jefferson County opened a new state of the art transfer station (a facility that temporarily holds trash until it can be taken to a landfill) near Leetown.
Now while these two occurrences may eliminate another scenario whereby wrongful and unsanitary conditions are artificially created for financial gain, the underlying environment that allowed the crisis to be fabricated in the first place still exists.
You see, only West Virginia and one other state require trash haulers to procure a permit of convenience and necessity in order to haul trash on public roads. Above and beyond the obvious safety regulations, like ensuring that haulers use safe equipment, hire licensed drivers, and maintain insurance, the state mandates that haulers prove that it is convenient and necessary to the public for them to haul trash. Why is this problematic? Because as long as at least one hauler is thusly permitted, the state won’t permit another company to haul trash without a showing of inadequate or inefficient service. In short, a statutory monopoly that lasts into practical perpetuity.
The trash hauling industry in West Virginia, like the big utility industries of old, has Charleston convinced that only through a government-sponsored monopoly can solid waste removal service be guaranteed. The downside of this antiquated viewpoint is that the public is susceptible to being held over a barrel, like we were in the Eastern Panhandle in 2004. Furthermore, the price you and I pay for waste removal is not adequately figured into the equation of issuing a Permit of Convenience and Necessity. And finally, serious efforts for mass recycling are lost when a monopoly—coupled with consolidated ownership of a single hauler and the local landfill—exists.
What’s the answer? Local control. It goes without saying that all haulers should hold insurance and meet industry and state-mandated safety standards. But beyond these threshold requirements, it is the local authorities who should decide which haulers operate in our area and under what conditions. Those who live among us and use the same trash removal service that we do should decide whether service is adequate and fairly priced—not Charleston.
Our neighbors in Maryland and Virginia pay approximately 33 percent less than we do for commercial trash removal and have better service to boot. Not only do their state laws allow for hauling competition, but their local authorities are allowed to conduct regular open bidding for haulers, thereby ensuring increasingly better service at a competitive price. Indeed, our local Solid Waste Authorities are in agreement that they too could conduct open bidding for waste haulers. They are also eager to step up recycling efforts.
Unfortunately, as long as Charleston allows conjoined ownership between landfill and hauler and mandates hauling monopolies, we will likely continue to deal with crises that don’t exist and inadequacies that do.