Automated trash pickup coming in March

Ken Grissom

Breaux Bridge — Automated garbage collection is coming here soon.

Bobby Guidry of Allied Waste Services said March 3 is the target date to commence the service.

“But if we don’t have everything ready to go, we’ll extend it, whether it’s a couple of weeks or a month,” he told City Council last week.

For customers, it means pickup once a week instead of twice a week, and everything including some yard wastes must be placed in the 95-gallon “carts” provided by the company.

Larger branches, called “boom piles” in the industry, and “bulky wastes” like old furniture will be collected twice a month. Major appliances or “white goods” will be picked up at an additional cost to the customer.

The base cost remains $18.30 per month per location throughout 2008 unless contractual provisions kick in regarding unforeseen costs — a rise in landfill fees, for instance.

A rate hike set for September will be postponed until Jan. 2009, Guidry said. At that time the hike will be tied to increased fuel and other costs as described by the producers price index compiled by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The thing most people notice at first is the less-frequent trash pickup schedule, Guidry said.

“Everyone is a little resistant to change,” he said.

“(Former St. Martinville Mayor) Eric Martin said it best. He said when they first enacted it, people wanted to run him out of town on a rail. And three months later, you couldn’t pry those carts away from them.”

The larger carts, which are picked up and emptied by mechanical arms operated by the truck driver from inside the cab, will enable the company to pick up as much trash once as week as it is currently doing twice a week with manual pickup of trash in cans and bags.

An added benefit is that the heavier, more secure carts are not as subject to the ravages of wind, careless garbage men and stray dogs, Guidry said.

“The view down a street before and after (automated pickup service) is like night and day,” he said. “You just have neat rows of carts. No spilled trash littering the street. It will really clean up your city.”

The decision to go with automated service is primarily driven by the increasing labor shortage faced by waste-haulers and other industries, Guidry said.

The council on Jan. 15 authorized Mayor Jack Dale Deholmme to contract for the new service.

Each customer location will be assigned a 96-gallon cart with an extra cart available at $65, the company’s cost.

The carts are serial numbered to help prevent theft. Carts stolen or damaged not through the customer’s fault will be replaced free as long as such losses don’t exceed 5 percent of the total number of carts provided to the city.