The Westlock Regional Waste Management Commission’s commercial tippage revenue has taken a $90,000 hit as waste collectors are hauling more garbage to landfills outside the region.
Waste commission manager Tom Moore said there has been a 60 per cent drop in the volume of waste collected primarily from town businesses, a decline he says is due to waste being hauled elsewhere.
“What they’ll do is a truck might come here, dump one, maybe two loads and they’ll take their last load back with them instead of bringing it out here,” Moore said.
The tippage fee is charged based on the amount of waste being disposed at the landfill.
Moore noted that over a period of two years, revenue from the town’s commercial waste has dropped by $90,000 — $60,000 in 2016 and $30,000 this year.
Moore said he wasn’t certain of the reason, but believed it had to do with haulers having contracts at other landfills, which require them to meet a quota.
Curtis Snell, board chair of the waste commission, has observed the same thing.
“Seeing as their trucks are coming out of the city, I think what is happening is when they go back, they make sure they take a full load back with them to wherever they haul,” he noted.
The situation differs between residential and commercial waste because as Snell explained, the town contracts GFL Environmental Inc. for residential garbage collection, which is then delivered to the Westlock Regional Landfill for disposal.
Businesses, on the other hand, have their own contracts with haulers.
“All of the town residential goes to the landfill because it’s part of the contract,” Snell said.
“We’re partners so we want to make sure all that had to go to our landfill. However, the commercial, like private enterprises and commercial accounts in town, there’s nothing saying where that stuff has to go.”
Although $90,000 may seem like a significant hit, Snell said they are managing well.
“It wasn’t a surprise, we knew it was coming so we’ve been dealing with it for a couple years,” he said.
“It slipped down a bit so we’ve adjusted our budget accordingly. We either tried to get more efficient in some areas and are looking for new business opportunities along the way. There’s no worry from a budget standpoint or deficit standpoint. We’re doing OK.”
Although the commission may not be able to influence those private contracts, he said Moore and the commission are working on picking up new business and making the local landfill competitive.
“What we do out there is we’re trying to make it an efficient landfill for people to haul in,” Snell said.
“There’s no waiting in line, generally, out there. You can haul in and out, so we do pick up some other commercial loads that might go somewhere else otherwise.
“If they haul somewhere else, they’re always waiting in line at these big landfills in the city. We have a very good area for them to dump in. We have heard comments from a lot of the drivers of the big commercials trucks that they really like hauling here if they can.”
Moore said that on a good note, the commission is gaining in other areas of commercial tippage.
“I’m not able to provide exact numbers; I just can see an increase in other commercial haulers coming in for now,” he said.
Snell added that over the last four years the previous commission board and the new one have been very proactive in trying to make the landfill better for its partners — the town, Westlock County and the Village of Clyde — and look at innovative ways to be efficient and environmentally friendly.
“We’ve taken it from being a garbage dump to a landfill over the past year,” he said.
Some examples include the organics and compost pad at the site, the recycle baler for paper, plastic containers and cardboard, which is up and running, and the new transfer station at the landfill entrance.
