By Ken Smith
Turnagain Times
Girdwood residents will have fewer hours and days to dump their trash at the Girdwood Transfer Site as the city seeks to cut operating costs at the Site, which is losing an estimated $100,000 per year.
After fielding public comments and meeting with the Girdwood Board of Supervisors, the decision was made to open one hour later during the summertime and eliminate one day of service in the fall and winter.
Beginning July 1, the Girdwood Transfer Site will open at 11 a.m. instead of 10 a.m. and remain open until 5 p.m. (it’s current closing time) Friday through Monday. Starting in October and running through March, it will switch to a three-day operation, eliminating its Friday service, and instead operate Saturday, Sunday and Monday opening one hour earlier from 10 a.m. until 5 p.m.
“We’re going to play it by air and see what works,” said Robert Hall, the city’s Director of Solid Waste and Services.
Hall said the changes will allow for incremental cost savings, but he could not give an exact dollar amount of the savings. The elimination of one day will allow the city to save on trash pick-up costs. Under the current operation schedule, a Solid Waste employee must be paid overtime to pick up a container on Sunday, a day Hall was targeting to close, but determined was too important a service day for local residents.
“Making operational chan-ges on our pick-up, makes one less run a week,” Hall said. “I know it’s going to be some savings, but not as much as we’d like. Any savings that I can get will certainly help.”
With the new schedule, Hall said two container pick-ups could be accomplished on Saturday and Monday, and with four hours in the summer being eliminated, he said the city would save some money there as well.
Hall considered extending the hours of operation until 6 p.m. but determined that it would not have made much of a difference in service to residents.
“We looked at staying open later, but the sense I got from the community was that people would show up late,” he said. “The bottom line is we decided to stay at 5 p.m.”
With the valley growing in population, and future housing development on the horizon on Municipal land in Crow Creek and possibly Winner Creek, the volume of trash and residential service will certainly increase in the coming years, a situation Hall said might prompt another schedule change. He also suggested that a private company step in and fill the needs of the community.
“Alaska Waste (which offers residential trash pick-up in Girdwood) services the community, and you could see them increasing service,” he said. “The other possibility is for a local entrepreneur to jump into the middle of it offering garbage service.”
Hall cited private contractors in Anchorage, Eagle River and Chugiak as examples of companies offering residential services.
“Competition is the name of the game,” he said.
Of course more residents putting out curbside garbage for pick-up means more bears congregating around trash cans, a potentially dangerous scenario, which Hall said could be eliminated with the use of bear-proof trash cages, which he said are widely used in Juneau and have been highly successful in deterring bears.
“It means a change in habit,” Hall said. “Just putting out the normal trash can with a lid is not going to cut it, if you’re in bear country.”