The Haines Borough is giving Community Waste Solutions an opportunity to “prove itself” before putting out-of-town waste disposal up to a boroughwide vote.
Borough manager Debra Schnabel, mayor Jan Hill and Solid Waste Working Group chair Darsie Culbeck recently met with CWS owner Tom Hall by phone about a solid waste proposal presented to the assembly in the fall.
The proposal included up to a 1 percent sales tax increase to help pay for the estimated $500,000 program that would call for a company to contract with the borough to collect garbage from a transfer station. Waste would then be shipped to an out-of-town facility. If Community Waste Solutions became the operator, it would agree to shut down its landfill, the proposal says.
Hall said in the meeting he wants to contract with the borough, but is skeptical that shipping waste out of Haines, especially construction debris, and shutting down the landfill is reasonable.
About half of the waste that goes into the local landfill is construction debris from Haines and Skagway, which amounts to about 100,000 pounds annually out of about 250,000 pounds. He said construction waste doesn’t easily compact in a shipping container, which would cause shipping costs to skyrocket.
“That was something that I think the committee really hadn’t been educated: the difference in how construction debris compacts, or not, and the costs being higher as a result of that,” Schnabel said.
Hall said construction waste is “an inert product and it could be dealt with differently.” An inert product would cause minimal environmental hazard to keep in the local landfill.
Hall also said he wanted a chance to show the borough he could responsibly handle the remaining 150,000 of municipal solid waste without shipping it south.
“I can make this work,” Hall said. “I feel like I can keep all that money that’s going to go down south in the community and I can do it under strict guidelines.”
Schnabel said Hall wanted the opportunity to demonstrate that his investment can put him in a position to “clean up the landfill, clean up his operations, to bale the materials and also do the recycling economically.”
Hall provided the borough with a timeline detailing landfill cleanup and installation of new equipment that is set to be operating by late April.
Culbeck was assigned to monitor CWS’s progress according to the schedule each month.
“I think the important thing is that (Tom) is very aware of what it is that we want,” Schnabel said. “If we have not gained confidence in Community Waste Solutions…we have the opportunity to sit down with Tom and evaluate the situation.”
Schnabel said her opinion of the proposal as it was presented to the assembly would be a “political challenge.” Levying sales tax to pay for the proposed waste disposal method would require a boroughwide vote. “There are things that we could do to improve on what we’re already doing with sales tax,” Schnabel said. “An additional sales tax for a project in addition to something we’re already doing, as a manager I saw that as a political challenge. But I’m more than happy to try to see what Community Waste Solutions can do.”