Study recommends a leaner SPSA, a new regional landfill

CHESAPEAKE

With SPSA in debt and facing new deficits and rate hikes, and with its mandate due to expire in 2018, leaders across South Hampton Roads are asking: What should the region do about its trash and recycling in the future?

On Wednesday, a major study was released that recommends several dramatic - and expensive - steps forward, including a greater role for private waste companies and a leaner Southeastern Public Service Authority.

Highlights of the study include: development of a new regional landfill, which would cost hundreds of millions of dollars; a change in how residents and businesses pay for garbage disposal; construction of a new composting and yard-waste center; and a permanent program to recycle used computers, TVs and other junk electronics, also known as "e-waste."

Conducted by SCS Engineers, a Norfolk consulting firm, the $248,000 study implores regional leaders to make up their minds - and fast - about whether to stick with a public waste authority, switch to the private sector, or fashion some kind of hybrid.

Robert Gardner, a senior vice president with the consulting firm, told a packed meeting room in Chesapeake that expediency is key. He noted that existing facilities are filling up with trash and in need of costly repairs, and that it would take at least 10 years to develop, finance and construct a new regional landfill.

The current landfill, in Suffolk, is expected to reach capacity by 2018, assuming a new storage cell can be built. The other public landfill, in Virginia Beach, could last four or five years after that, according to the study.

Bucky Taylor, SPSA's executive director since August, said the conclusions support what he has been arguing for months - that despite the authority's myriad problems, regional cooperation among local governments "is still in the best interest of our citizens and customers."

Taylor said the study, along with a highly critical state audit of SPSA's past practices and management, will be the focus of an executive retreat next month, when several "big-picture decisions" will be hashed out.

Others saw things differently.

State Del. John Cosgrove, a Chesapeake Republican and fierce critic of SPSA, said the study failed to assess the possible privatization of the entire waste system - an option he would like to see explored.

At least one company, ReEnergy Holdings LLC, based in New York, has offered a takeover of SPSA and its assets. SPSA's board of directors rejected the bid over the summer, but without public input or a public vote.

The study comes as SPSA is emerging from one of its bleakest periods in a 30-year history as a regional government experiment.

The agency owes more than $240 million and needs to borrow millions more. It was pilloried by state auditors last month as mismanaged and financially adrift for years. Several top officials recently have quit or taken early retirements as controversies mounted.

And now, new agency executives must decide whether to sell a key asset - the waste-to-energy incinerator in Portsmouth, which burns about half of all local trash - to private bidders. The money would help settle old debts but would dramatically shift how SPSA operates.

T his week, Taylor sent letters to city managers and county administrators saying that SPSA faces a $6.4 million budget shortfall and might have to raise disposal rates again - from the current $104 per ton of garbage to as much as $135 per ton.

If approved, those rates would rank as some of the highest in the nation. Local residents paid $57 per ton just two years ago.

The study suggests a different fee system altogether, intended to flatten out rates between commercial and residential customers. The new system, described as "a waste generator fee," would charge people more money for throwing away more trash and thus would encourage recycling.

More generally, the study recommends a future network that includes a smaller, more administrative SPSA and the private sector handling more day-to-day services. The model is similar to how wastes are managed on the Peninsula and in the Richmond area.

It does not presume a specific course of action, however. In urging a new landfill, for example, the study notes that the project could be developed by SPSA alone with public money, in conjunction with private partners and private funds, or under a service contract with a private company.

The long practice of granting free disposal to the city or county that hosts a landfill should end, the study recommends. Instead, hosts would receive a straight fee, a yearly bonus, but also pay the same rate as other communities.

SPSA also should find a centrally located site and construct a new facility to recycle yard waste and create compost, the study concludes. The agency was forced to close such a facility last year in Virginia Beach because neighbors complained of foul odors and feeling sick.

Since then, bags of yard wastes have mostly been dumped in the landfill, taking up valuable space, according to the study.

Scott Harper, (757) 446-2340, scott.harper@pilotonline.com