[StBernard] Garbage firm ordered out of site

[Westley Annis]

Garbage firm ordered out of site
Only St. Bernard residents allowed 
Tuesday, November 04, 2008
By Chris Kirkham
St. Bernard bureau 

St. Bernard Parish President Craig Taffaro has ordered garbage hauling
executive Sidney Torres IV to vacate a parish-owned waste transfer site that
has been at the center of a controversy regarding massive increases in
garbage fees billed to St. Bernard since mid-2007. 

The parish attorney has also asked Torres' company, SDT Waste & Debris, to
stop dumping portable toilet waste into St. Bernard's sewage system. SDT has
been paying the parish a quarterly fee to dump the solid waste into a sewage
lift station in the parish, but Taffaro said he had no knowledge of the
arrangement and no written agreement with SDT. 

"It's a little disconcerting to think there are things going on around us
that there are no documents to support," Taffaro said. 

SDT has exclusive use of a parish waste transfer site on Paris Road as part
of a verbal agreement struck with former Parish President Henry "Junior"
Rodriguez's administration. The waste hauling company could bring trash and
debris to the site from other parishes in exchange for hauling St. Bernard's
waste to River Birch Landfill in Waggaman free of charge. The parish pays
SDT a $20 monthly fee for each household, as well as disposal costs at the
landfill. 

But questions about how much of St. Bernard's garbage was mixed in with
trash and debris from elsewhere led Taffaro to shut down the site. 

"I don't have a cooperative endeavor agreement with SDT Waste & Debris
Services, and this is the result of a great deal of confusion that we have
relative to our debris stream and the related costs," Taffaro said in a news
release Monday afternoon. "I'm sure it can be worked out, but I have to take
precautionary measures until that time." 

The executive order says only St. Bernard residents can dump debris into
bins at the site, and that SDT must now haul residential garbage directly to
the landfill. 

Torres said Monday that he told Taffaro it would be impossible to
immediately vacate the site, since it had been a central part of his
business since 2007. 

"I don't understand why (Taffaro's announcement) would be released when I
discussed with him that it's not going to be able to happen tonight," Torres
said. "I'm going to need time to work through it." 

Regarding the portable toilet waste from St. Bernard and throughout the
area, Torres said he has been paying the parish 10 cents per gallon of waste
dumped into the sewage system. If anyone in the parish had questions about
the arrangement, they should have asked, he said. 

Torres said he and Taffaro were negotiating the sewage and transfer site
issues Monday night. Taffaro did not return a call seeking additional
comment Monday evening, but he said in a text message that nothing has been
settled. 

The Parish Council tonight will consider opening an investigation into
garbage costs with SDT. A native son of Chalmette and the product of a
powerful political family, Torres has risen to prominence quickly in the
local garbage hauling industry. 

According to parish billing records, landfill disposal costs for St. Bernard
garbage jumped from $41,000 in May 2007 to $392,000 in February 2008, with a
series of sharp increases every month. Torres said the increased costs came
from residents and contractors who brought loads of construction debris to
the transfer site -- debris he said parish officials knew was being billed
to them. 

Contractors and residents had been told by St. Bernard that they could dump
construction debris into a bin at the site, but many came with large
trailers that were unable to offload into the small bin. Torres said their
debris was combined into a large pile on the site, then added to St.
Bernard's bill. 

"All it would take is 10 to 12 trailers a day to come in there and make up
the difference," Torres said. "We did our work, and we did what they asked
us to do. . . . I have no problems making good on whatever it is, if SDT
owes anything." 

Taffaro and Rodriguez said they knew about the construction debris bins, but
not about the large loads of debris that were simply dumped into a massive
pile on the site with other garbage. 

"In all fairness, we should have had more of some sort of preventative
program there," Rodriguez said Monday. "We had no reason to believe this was
going on." 

Construction debris by itself can be disposed of at a much cheaper cost than
debris that is mixed in with garbage and must be disposed in a more
restrictive landfill at a higher per-ton cost. 

SDT also has no scales at the site to weigh the incoming trash, making it
difficult to gauge exactly how much garbage should be billed to the parish
or to other SDT customers.