Anchorage’s city-owned trash utility wants to raise rates for the first time in years to shore up a looming deficit and, managers say, set in motion a revolution in how the city handles its trash and junk.
In 2019, Solid Waste Services customers may be asked to pay 5 percent more for trash pickup, the first such hike in a decade. At the same time, the utility wants to boost its drop-off fees by 6 percent at the Anchorage Regional Landfill in Eagle River and the Central Transfer Station off the Old Seward Highway in Anchorage. Those rates last rose in 2012.
Without the changes, the utility will run a deficit next year, said Mark Spafford, the general manager of Solid Waste Services. The utility serves 12,000 residential customers and 4,700 commercial dumpsters in the downtown area, but a financial loss would be backfilled by general government funds.
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The Anchorage Assembly needs to approve the proposed new rates. That vote is expected by the end of December. Higher rates would generate a combined $1.7 million in new annual revenue in 2019, according to documents submitted to the Assembly.
In addition to closing a budget gap and building up financial reserves, Spafford said, the utility needs the extra cash for bigger projects -- with the goal of massively reducing the amount of waste that goes to the landfill each year.
Solid Waste Services is preparing to buy 27 acres of undeveloped land south of the existing transfer station at 1111 E. 56th Ave. The land, currently owned by Wal-Mart, is slated become the future home of a brand-new Central Transfer Station -- one that is larger and more advanced than the existing facility.
The current transfer station was built in the 1980s, when Anchorage had about half its current population. It is in serious need of upgrades, Spafford said. The facility closed for three weeks in August to replace a tipping floor and commercial scales, but officials warned that closures would become more extended and frequent.
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The transfer station is a crucial nexus to the more remote landfill. About 80 percent of the waste delivered to the landfill first comes to the transfer station. On just one day in 2016, a total of 640 vehicles circulated through the facility. Long lines often snake out to the surrounding public streets.
Utility staff also contend with leaky roofs, failing heating and air conditioning and limited maintenance and storage space, Spafford said.
“We’ve outgrown it, to a certain degree,” Spafford said. “And the philosophy with solid waste management has definitely changed in the last 30-40 years.”
Depending on the level of sophistication, a new and expanded transfer station would cost between $60 million and $90 million, financed with borrowed money. Spafford said the utility will start drawing up designs next year. There would likely be new buildings for administration, maintenance and storage. The utility would also repurpose some of the old buildings at the existing transfer station to expand its drop-off facilities.
Spafford especially wants to divert waste away from the landfill. He imagines special areas where people can drop off yard waste, food scraps, recyclables and even tires.
“We have to do everything we can now to take care of (the landfill) and the extend the life of it, because our options for disposal once the landfill is gone are not good,” Spafford said.
Extending the life of the landfill is central to a master plan Solid Waste Services recently completed. Tetra Tech, a Pasadena, California-based consulting firm, got the contract to create the plan, which is like a road map for the utility’s future.
The document particularly emphasizes a growth in recycling and composting, known as “waste diversion.”
At Solid Waste Services, Spafford led a push to get pink curbside composting bins for a small portion of customers this past summer. Next year, the utility plans to make the curbside compost program available to all its customers.
Other longer-term ideas in the master plan include an “alternative technology facility” and methods to convert food scraps and organic waste into a renewable bio-gas.
Earlier this year Spafford traveled to Florida and toured plants in West Palm Beach and Tampa that convert waste into energy. Those plants burn clean, like natural gas, he said.
The “big, hairy audacious goal” for Anchorage, Spafford said, is an incinerator that can burn waste and reduce the volume of trash in the city by 90 percent. That project would extend the life of the landfill another 200 years and also generate energy, Spafford said.
Such facilities are common in Europe, but would demand serious financial and political heft, Spafford said. It’s also a long ways down the road. But he still gets excited talking about it.
In the immediate future, Spafford is bullish about timelines. He thinks construction on a new transfer station can start by 2021.
“The site is just undersized for what we want to do,” Spafford said.