WASILLA -- For Jim Faiks, who lives about 10 miles outside of Big Lake at the end of the winding, two-lane gravel of Burma Road, paying a commercial hauler to fetch his garbage isn't an option. Nobody runs out that far.
"If I put trash out at the end of my driveway, it would sit there 'til the ravens came and ate it," Faiks said.
Instead, like many residents of historically outlying areas in the Valley, Faiks takes his garbage to a transfer site in Big Lake.
The site is one of 13 operated by the Matanuska-Susitna Borough in more populated places like Butte or Big Lake, but also in more remote areas like the Denali Highway, Lake Louise and even the backcountry outpost of Skwentna.
Rates are low. Dumping one or two 33-gallon bags costs $1 apiece. Faiks paid $8 to dump six bags last week, a flat rate paid if a customer is dumping anywhere from three to six bags.
But the borough operates those transfer sites at a big loss -- $221,000 a year for Big Lake alone.
Partly to offset the expense of keeping rates low at transfer sites, the borough is raising rates paid by private garbage haulers at the central landfill. Their curbside customers can expect to see their bills go up, too.
Basically, private haulers and people paying for garbage pickup are picking up part of the tab for transfer sites.
"The high cost of dumping at the central landfill subsidizes the operation of these transfer sites that are losing money," said Terry Dolan, the borough's public works director.
Dumping days
The transfer sites started as a way to avoid roadside trash dumping in the days when the Valley was more rural. The central landfill, off the Palmer-Wasilla Highway about halfway between those two cities, is a long way from parts of a borough a little smaller than Ireland, with a population of nearly 100,000 residents.
People still dump trash in out-of-the-way places, but these days the borough's ever-growing population means that transfer sites in what used to be outlying areas -- Butte, Sutton, Big Lake -- now have curbside service available too. Commercial haulers pick up garbage from Trapper Creek to Sutton.
That puts the borough in direct competition with private companies.
"They're putting all the cost, all the burden on the commercial haulers," said Sean Bradley, owner of Raven Valley Refuse, which provides garbage and recycling service for about 1,500 customers.
Landfill fees paid by haulers offset transfer site costs, as well as a new recycling center at the landfill, Bradley said.
"All of which is directly competing with us," he continued. "So it's kind of odd that we have to pay for them to compete against us."
Phil and Claire Horton built Denali Refuse as a low-cost alternative to "the national waste collection service," but Denali's 800 customers will see the pending landfill fee hikes in their bills.
Phil Horton calls the transfer site situation "ridiculous" and says landfill fees account for about half his operational costs.
"The one in Big Lake is really not that far from the central landfill," he said. "It should just go away. There's one out in the Butte. It should go away."
Talkeetna Refuse didn't return a call for comment. Neither did Alaska Waste, the state's largest commercial garbage hauler operated nationally by publicly traded Waste Connections Inc.
Alaska Waste is asking the Regulatory Commission of Alaska to approve a 26 percent rate hike for the Mat-Su, according to RCA filings. The borough's pending landfill rate hike doesn't appear to factor into the proposed increase, based on the company's filing with the RCA. Alaska Waste is also asking for increases in the Interior and on the Kenai Peninsula. No decision is expected until at least March.
Rate hike
The borough plans to raise rates for commercial haulers at the central landfill on Jan. 1 after several increases in recent years.
The increase is not just due to transfer site costs, officials say. The borough is spending $4 million to close a cell at the landfill, and allots $75,000 every year for the new recycling center.
Rates didn't go up at all between 2001 and 2011, even though borough operating and permit compliance costs rose annually, according to a borough memo. Since 2005, the borough has operated the landfill through an enterprise fund rather than property tax payments -- operational costs have to come out of revenues.
The enterprise fund was running at a huge deficit when the borough studied rates and started raising them in 2011, Dolan said.
This year, fees for commercial haulers ended up at $87 per ton. The next increase, on Jan. 1, was supposed to be $106 but is $110 per ton instead, he said. That's because the Assembly wanted the landfill to start taking credit cards, and that costs the borough about 3 percent for every transaction.
Unlike the Mat-Su, the Kenai Peninsula Borough pays for most of its solid waste program with property taxes, according to Jack Maryott, the Kenai Peninsula Borough's solid waste director. Like Mat-Su, Kenai operates numerous transfer sites, from unmanned ones from Hope to Anchor Point to manned sites in Sterling, Nikiski and Kenai to sites at Homer and Seward for construction debris and waste.
But because of changes in bond repayment rates and the fact that the Kenai borough collects fees for construction demolition from commercial sources or drilling waste, the property tax burden has actually gone down in the last three years, Maryott said.
Rethinking transfer sites
Mat-Su borough officials say they're early in the process of weighing the transfer site problem. Work is just starting on the next budget for a fiscal year beginning in July. Skwentna, the only site not permitted by the state, is due to close next summer.
It costs about half a million just to put transfer site waste in the landfill, according to Macey "Butch" Shapiro, the borough's solid waste manager. Add to that the $360,000-plus hauling contract to Tew's Inc., the Big Lake contractor that takes garbage from the transfer sites to the central landfill.
Those loads would bring in fees at the gate if private haulers brought them.
Meanwhile, the landfill is working on a few initiatives to reduce overall costs by reducing waste, Shapiro said. Numerous groups around the Valley -- Big Lake, Talkeetna, Meadow Lakes among them -- are writing grants to improve recycling facilities at transfer sites. The borough is trying to help by donating large containers.
The other thing Shapiro said he's looking at is compacting transfer site trash. That could cut the number of trips from sites to the landfill by about a third.
Solid waste officials plan to put together a packet for the borough Assembly. Fee increases at the sites could be on the table.
"You have all kinds of potential ways you can go, all the way from shutting 'em down all the way to finding different ways … recycling, compaction," Shapiro said. "They're very pricey."
Faiks, who sits on the Big Lake community council and is the lead petitioner on local efforts to incorporate into a second-class city, says he understands the borough's transfer-site dilemma.
But he also worries that old habits could return without them or if fees rise.
If the close-by sites disappear or cost more, more people might dump their garbage illegally in business dumpsters, putting the cost on those companies. And the sites really help people on fixed budgets.
"It's also keeping people from dumping it off the side of the road," he said. "I really don't see that very often."
Correction: An earlier version of incorrectly described the cost of credit card transactions at the Matanuska-Susitna Borough landfill as $3. The borough pays a 3 percent credit card fee for every transaction. The story has been updated to reflect the accurate figure.