City Council Approves New Refuse & Recycling Contract

The City Council has approved a new refuse contract.  The 5-year contract was awarded to Waste Management who was the low, qualified, and responsible bidder.  The City also included additional recycling services and RBMPs (Recycling Best Management Practices) in the contract for bulk recycling (furniture, mattresses, carpet), unlimited every other week single-sort recycling, and organics comingled in the yard waste cart on the curb.  All other services in the contract remain the same:

Organics collection in the yard waste cart will not start until April 2018; more information will be published in the February 2018 newsletter.  The City now owns all carts in the field so residents will not need to exchange their carts; the carts will receive new labels sometime next year.

Staff has approved daily route changes as requested by Waste Management.  Several hundred properties currently serviced on Wednesdays and Thursdays will move to Friday.  This will balance the daily work load and should eliminate problems with missed pickups.  The affected properties will be notified.

In 2015 the City Council set utility rates through 2019.  The 5-year rate plan will remain intact and will not increase due to the new contract. However, the yard waste/organics cart charge will be lowered from the current $5.12 per month to $2.50 per month.

A new 2018 Refuse Collection Schedule has been posted on the website.

The main goal of Columbia Heights Solid Waste Management is to reduce trash disposal, especially since the City pays a separate $75 per ton for disposal, which costs over half a million dollars.  In addition, the State Legislature has given the MPCA (Minnesota Pollution Control Agency) a mandate to recycle 75% of all refuse by the year 2030.  The MPCA has developed numerous RBMPs and the City is implementing several of them in the new contract.