Agreement reached on toters, twice a week pick up
BY PHIL REYNOLDS SOUTH JETTY REPORTER

Like it or not, by Jan. 1 you'll have new trash cans in Port Aransas.

City council members on Oct. 18 voted to accept a proposal that will give Port Aransas standardized, wheeled garbage bins known as "toters." The new system will retain the city's current twice-a-week pickup and will allow users a choice between the full-size 95-gallon bins and smaller 65-gallon bins.

The new trash bins will be provided by Allied Waste, unlike the current system, where trash cans are the responsibility of the consumer.

While some residents protested during the initial discussion of the change at the Sept. 20 city council meeting, no one spoke against the switch on Oct. 18.

Protestors claimed the bins are too heavy and are dangerous, but at the Oct. 18 meeting Port Aransan Betty Bundy got up out of the audience and wheeled the empty bin around the council chambers with little effort. Bundy, 86, weighs 115 pounds and stands 5 feet 3 inches tall.

The new contract affects only residential trash pick-up and businesses that use the same city-provided trash pickup. It does not apply to commercial trash bins known as "dumpsters."

Under the contract with Allied Waste, Port Aransas' current trash service provider, the city also will get a formal recycling program as well as programs to pick up brush at the curb and to pick up large items that won't fit in the toters.

Port Aransas has had an informal agreement with Allied Waste to handle recyclable materials for some time; the new contract formalizes that agreement.

Glass will not be included in the materials that can be recycled, however.

Allied Waste manager Bob Bradley said the city's insistence, based on citizen demands, that trash be picked up twice a week would probably result in Saturday pickups. He said the city would be divided into three pickup zones instead of the two it has now.

Brush trucks will circulate through the city once a week, picking up brush at curbside, and noting which addresses have large items such as sofas and appliances to pick up. On the last trip of the day, the same truck will make the large-item pickup, he said.

Brush and large-item pickup would be done once a week, under the contract.

Prices to consumers are expected to go up to $29.79 a month, about $5 more than the current charge. Residents older than 65 years will continue to get a reduced rate on their utility bills.

The change in trash containers will let Allied Waste crews use a mechanical arm to pick up the toters, empty them and return them to the curb, Bradley said. Both the 95-gallon or the 65-gallon containers lend themselves to the mechanical dumping; the only difference is that the 65-gallon containers are shorter than the 95-gallon bins, he said.

Bradley told the council in September that regardless of the new contract, some change would have to be made. He said regulations limit his crews to picking up trash cans of no more than 35 gallons manually. Yet, many homeowners have bought larger trash cans and still expect them to be lifted and manually emptied, he said.

"I have a liability problem with my crews," Bradley said.

Answering charges that the 95-gallon containers are subject to being blown away from their position, Bradley - who brought one of the bins to the council meeting - said, "It's going to be quite a wind to blow this thing down the street. We run them in Aransas Pass, Ingleside and everywhere else, and they don't blow down the street."

Angie Tiemann, who supervises the contract between Aransas Pass and Allied Waste, said she rarely if ever gets reports of the cans being blown out of position.

But Councilman Charles Bujan said, "I see them all over the place in Sinton, not just along the street but out in the street."

Bujan added that once the bins get into the street, they remain there.

Bradley pointed out that 30-gallon trash cans are much lighter than the 95-gallon bins, and more subject to being blown away.

"That would be the same with three 30-gallon trash cans (to equal the capacity of one 95-gallon can), they'd be all over the place," he said.

At least some of the citizen protests, and letters to the South Jetty, seem to have been fueled by reports in San Antonio Express-News columnist Roddy Stinson's column that people have fallen into the bins and been injured, or that bins have fallen on them while being taken to or from the curb, causing injuries.

Stinson did not document the reports in his column, and repeated phone calls to him by the South Jetty seeking documentation have gone unanswered.

Bradley said he had never heard of someone falling into a 95-gallon trash bin, a complaint aired in a recent Stinson column. The lip of the 95-gallon bin is 41 inches above the ground.

Bradley said a system would be worked out between now and the end of the year that would allow homeowners to indicate whether they wanted the 65-gallon or the 95- gallon bins.