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Minutes - Regular Meeting Solid Waste Advisory Board February 5, 2009 Approved March 5, 2009 The job at Public Works is if the public demands something to happen we do it. Something that people look forward to is exemptions . There is an extremely high exemption rate in Chapel Hill . All those things are pro forma costs for a private company and they will give you a price to do all that stuff. The reason that Chapel Hill hasn' t privatized collection and hauling is because they can ' t do it any cheaper than we do it. We look at it every year . Sassaman states that there are some other things about your service . There is staff there that when there is a storm, things disappear . Trees that fall, etc . they' re gone, cleanup is quick . Part of that is because there is a place for you to put the debris . Howard states that calls come in from all over the State from municipalities that have gotten out of the business and want to know how to get back into it. It is an extremely difficult thing to do . If you sell your equipment, it' s expensive to replace . Rules have changed, if it' s franchised you can' t just take it away, you, have to pay them . It' s complicated . Bonnie Hauser, Orange County Voice asks isn' t it so, that roughly half of the collection in Chapel Hill, Carrboro and Hillsborough is private including the private collector at UNC . Those are the numbers I ' ve seen on solid waste . Pollock states that in terms of out- source there is the question of Carrboro just made it open market versus the Town to compete dollar for dollar . UNC out-sourced the collection but kept control of where they send it. How much of it do public agencies still control that is hauled in a private truck? Hillsborough franchises but they control where it goes . Their franchisee has to abide by the County" s and Towns' rules . Hauser states many private companies are very interested in our waste . Being relatively new to the waste business, it is quite interesting. There is waste transfer station and there is waste-to-energy . Our group has been researching both . Back in December, when the County said lets look at the [Hwy] West 54 site and the decision had to be made quickly, if not the garbage would pile up . We came back stating that before moving too quickly maybe a vendor could be used . We started calling Durham Transfer Station run by Republic Allied, Waste Management and Waste Industries and they said they would take the garbage . They have the head room for 240 tons a day . They would take the garbage on an interim basis if your landfill runs out of capacity . So there is no rush if the County needed a little more time to find a site that is better . I don' t want to get into if this is the right site or not. In December when the Howell site came up and the estimate came from the County of $5 -$ 7 million dollars to build a waste transfer station plus another $2-$3 million for the land that is $7 - $10 million to build it - no cost was provided to what it would cost to operate it. The vendors say $1 - $2 million to build a waste transfer station. 5