Dive Brief: 

• Originally brokered in 1994, the current version of the agreement being considered by Stanislaus County supervisors today lowers the landfill fee from $33 per ton to $26 per ton, as well as decreasing fees for cities to send trash to the waste-to-energy plant. The waste burner fee, around $40 per ton, had become a point of contention among the cities governed under the waste pact. In 2013, the city of Turlock chose to send its waste to a separate dump site. Other pact-governed cities have wondered how to legally get around the law.
• Over the next decade, the county will spend $2.3 million in reserves to decrease waste burner rates for eight cities under the waste agreement. As their part of the deal, the cities will guarantee to send a specified amount of trash to the county waste-burner and landfill.
• Based upon their consultants’ advice and reports, the board of supervisors believe the volume of trash sent to the landfill and waste-burner will help the county compete with other similar facilities. Cities in the program get a 10 percent credit toward a state mandate requiring them to halve their landfill waste deposits.

Dive Insight:

While this new agreement would lower rates for cities for waste and recycling, it also goes a long way to proving some of the effectiveness of inter-municipal cooperation. By pooling resources and working together on waste removal, these cities may have given themselves a competitive advantage over other cities. But it is unclear if the deal will continue to work in the long-term. Turlock residents, whose city led the push for greater competitiveness in the county’s waste operations, could, ironically, see their rates increased if the supervisors ink the agreement today.