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36 <br /> Orange County, NC <br /> Financial Plan & Rate Study for Solid Waste Enterprise Fund SCS ENGINEERS <br /> 4 . 2 MODIFICATION OF ORGANICS COLLECTION PROGRAM <br /> FUNDING STRUCTURE <br /> Commercial curbside collection and residential drop-off collection of food and other organic <br /> wastes currently cost the Department $80 per ton per its contract with Brooks Contracting. The <br /> Department could encourage residents to compost at home to reduce expenditure by the <br /> Department and keep the waste closer to its point of origin for direct reuse. The Brooks <br /> composting facility is located an hour southeast of the Town of Chapel Hill, approximately 36 <br /> miles away. Significant cost is incurred by the contractor to haul the material to the windrow <br /> composting site from the point of collection, and then back to the Orange County Landfill so the <br /> finished compost can be solid to residents. Efficiencies are to be gained by changing the <br /> approach to the commercial collection efforts and bolstering the home composting program <br /> already in place. <br /> Additionally, the program funding structure could be changed to implement cost sharing by the <br /> largest utilizers of the commercial organics collections program, which could bear some or all of <br /> its costs. This would shift the burden of paying for the program from the Programs Fee or <br /> general fund to the entities that benefit most from the program. County businesses utilizing the <br /> program could pay a flat monthly fee or, alternatively, pay according to the quantity of organics <br /> disposed through the program. <br /> 4.3 MAJOR WEATHER EVENT/STORM DEBRIS HANDLING <br /> Currently the Department handles staging, clearing, and disposal operations for the cleanup of <br /> storm debris from major weather events such as tornados, hurricanes, ice storms, and major <br /> thunderstorms. Funding for these efforts is not provided via emergency allocations from the <br /> General Fund, and the Department generally absorbs the costs. Financial resources should be <br /> allocated for these non-routine events so that the cost burden is not transferred to the <br /> Department. Additional monies may be allocated into a hypothetical renewal and extension <br /> (R&E) fund to cover costs associated with unexpected weather or natural disaster events. <br /> 4.4 REGULATED RECYCLABLE MATERIALS ORDINANCE <br /> The institution of the Regulated Recyclable Materials Ordinance (RRMO) in October 2002 may <br /> have had the unintended side effect of reducing the tonnage of material disposed at the C&D <br /> Landfill (without directing this material for recycling). It is possible that the sorting and <br /> permitting requirements of the RRMO coupled with the timing of the global economic recession <br /> may have caused a decrease in tonnages that has not rebounded as of FY 2015-16 as shown in <br /> Exhibit 18. Although the RRMO does produce additional revenue from contractor licensing fees, <br /> the tipping fee revenue and economies of scale lost from the decline in the tonnage of C&D <br /> waste disposed(from roughly 30,000 TPY to 6,000 TPY, an 80% decline that equals <br /> approximately$960K in lost revenue at the current tipping fee of$40/ton) outweighs the <br /> licensing fee revenue of$120K considerably. <br /> 26 <br />