Norris cuts recycling, ends back-door pickup
Norris residents will no longer be seeing recycling trucks like this one from Waste Connections, Inc., when the city’s new trash collection contract goes into effect July 1. The City Council voted Monday night to end recyling pickups in the city. (photo:G. Chambers Williams III )
The council approved a new contract with its current provider, Waste Collections, Inc., which does not include the back-door trash pickup service that Norris residents have enjoyed for years – not because the city didn’t want it, but because the contractor did not offer it.
As for recycling, the council could have chosen a contract proposal that would have included biweekly pickups, but that would have raised the residential refuse pickup charge to $24.50 a month from the current $16.
Instead, the council picked an alternate contract that eliminates recycling, but also reduces the monthly trash collection fee to $15, which is added to the water and sewer bills of all residents.
Norris residents packed the council’s meeting room to hear the waste-collection options and voice their opinions about the changes, with some speaking out against the elimination of back-door service.
But City Manager Adam Ledford told the council and residents in attendance that only three companies submitted bids for the new trash contract, and none of them included an option for back-door pickup.
There is a narrow exception, however. Disabled people with a doctor’s note will still be able to get back-door service. That will include people with permanent and temporary disabilities.
Still unknown is whether Waste Connections will charge extra fees for the back-door pickups for disabled residents, Ledford said.
One resident told the council that he doesn’t want to have to move his trash can to curbside every week, then back to his house, “because I have a long driveway that’s on a hill.”
Some of the residents also complained about the new 96-gallon trash cans that will be provided by Waste Collections as part of the contract, and which residents will be required to use.
Those plastic cans are specially made so an automated arm on the trash truck can lift them and dump them into the back of the truck without requiring a person to do it. That way, the trash trucks will have only a driver on board, without a helper, which will lower the contractor’s labor costs.
Residents also will be required to move their trash cans back to their houses within 24 hours after the weekly pickup.
Several residents said they didn’t want the large trash cans, and would prefer to buy smaller ones at Walmart that they believed the trash truck’s automated arm could also pick up without human help.
But Ledford said the automated pickup system is set only to handle the larger cans, and Waste Connections will not allow any exceptions to their use.
People who want to recycle plastics, paper and cardboard will need to haul it themselves to the Anderson County Convenience Center on Norris Freeway, just south of Andersonville Highway, Ledford said.
The current contract with Waste Connection expires June 30.
There is no provision for residents to decline the trash service to prevent having to pay for it, Ledford told a resident who wanted that option.
