County Commission Chairman John Meeks said abuses of free residential garbage dumping forced the county to make changes.
By Terry Witt – Spotlight Senior Reporter
Free household garbage dumping at the county landfill sounded good a year ago when the program started, but abuses of the system led Levy County Commissioners Tuesday to place a cap on how much trash can be deposited.
Commissioners voted 4-1, with Commissioner Lilly Rooks saying no, to allow residents to dump no more than 8 bags of garbage daily at the landfill or two 90 gallon containers filled with household garbage.
The new rules also don’t allow people to haul garbage to satellite dumping stations in trailers. They must haul it in their personal vehicles. The county has one satellite station in operation near Shell Mound off County Road 337.
A second satellite station is being developed close to Camp Azalea. A third satellite station is planned in the Inglis area.
Chairman John Meeks said the new limit on dumping household garbage won’t affect honest people who dump only what they collect at their homes, but it will put a halt to haulers pretending to be dumping only household garbage.
Landfill records show substantial increases in the dumping of household garbage after the county started its new program eliminating tipping fees.
A sampling of tonnage dumped at the landfill showed 2,151.61 tons were deposited at the landfill in January of 2018 compared to 2,455.86 tons in January of 2019, a difference of 304.25 tons.
In May of 2018 there were 1,900.03 tons dumped at the landfill compared to 2,297.85 tons deposited in May of 2019. In July of 2018 there were 2,120.95 tons dumped compared to 2,370.79 tons in July of 2019.
Meeks said the county is barely keeping its head above water at the landfill as it stands now, but he said the new rate schedule should curb the abuses that have occurred up to this point.
“This is what we should have adopted to begin with, but we didn’t realize we’re going to have all of these problems,” Meeks said.
Rooks said when the county commission adopted its $116 landfill property assessment a year ago residents were promised they could dump their residential household garbage free of charge.
“We’ve been telling everybody it’s free dumping. Now you are saying we’re going to charge,” Rooks said.
Commissioner Matt Brooks, who oversees the landfill, said the county is seeing “repeat-offenders coming in daily with trailer loads.”
Commissioner Matt Brooks said the expected surge in residential dumping never tapered off due to abuses.
“They’re picking up the whole neighborhood and making a business out of it and taking advantage of the system,” Brooks said. “We knew some of this would happen. We thought it would taper off after a while, but it has not.”
Administrative Landfill Manager Rod Hastings said the amount of trash coming into the landfill now is beyond anything they expected.
Landfill Administrative Director Rod Rod Hastings explains why a cap was placed on residential dumping.
“We’re getting bombarded, overloaded with a tremendous volume of trash. It has never tapered off,” he said.
Hastings said they predicted the surge in household garbage dumping would peak after the four month period, but it never decreased.
“We are seeing double-axle trailers come in. We’ve never seen these people before. They do have a residence in the county. We’re doing our part, but they’re coming back the next day and this is a 5 to 7 foot sidewall trailer. It’s not a normal household trailer, so we’re just trying to get a hold of it.”
Spotlight founder Linda Cooper said the county should have acted much faster to curb the abuses of the system. She said they knew the free residential garbage dumping wasn’t working six months after it was put in place.
Cooper had asked commissioners to cut the landfill assessment to $50, less than half of what is now, and continue charging tipping fees at the landfill scales, before the $116 landfill assessment was approved.
They ignored her request.
She said commissioners could have addressed the problem when they were building this year’s commission budget, but instead of acting on it when they knew there was a problem, they waited until October.
Cooper said they could still cut the landfill assessment to $50 and go back to tipping fees at the scales.
“You wouldn’t have all this subjective guessing. Everyone pays for what they bring. To do it now, after you made the budget, and you knew six months ago it wasn’t working…”
“We’re not making up rules. We’re clarifying,” Meeks interjected.
“You’re clarifying after you’ve implemented this $116 landfill assessment,” Cooper said. “You were losing money is what you’re saying.”
“Because people are abusing what we implemented,” Meeks responded.
“They’re abusing the process because there are no rules and regulations,” Cooper said.
“Now there are,” Meeks responded.
“After the fact,” Cooper said.
Hastings said landfill officials began thinking of alternatives when they saw things increases in dumping that weren’t projected.
“We tried to make corrections, but unfortunately it kept escalating,” he said.
Cooper reminded Hastings she brought her suggestion to the county commission two years ago.
Hastings pointed out to Spotlight after the meeting that residents can still bring 8 bags of household garbage to the landfill daily at no cost under the new rules. He said that equals 48 bags per week or $36 in savings. The yearly savings is $1,728 compared to the landfill assessment of $116.
But residents who pay the landfill assessment also have to pay for depositing their garbage at the landfill. Property owners don’t get free garbage disposal.
The math isn’t perfect.
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Board of County Commission Regular Meeting October 8, 2019; Posted October 8, 2019
