New garbage deal inked for East Rockaway

After 25 years of having the Town of Hempstead dispose of East Rockaway's trash and process it at the Covanta plant in Westbury, the village has signed a five year contract, with an option for five more, with Omni Recycling of Babylon to process the 7,000 tons of garbage the village produces each year. The contract went into effect on Aug. 20 and will save the village roughly $1.7 million over the next 10 years, village officials said.

"This is a great deal," said Village Administrator John Mirando. "The Town of Hempstead would have committed us to another 25 years, and that would have prevented us from doing things differently if there were changes to how garbage can be disposed."

Mayor Ed Sieban said the new deal is better than the previous because it includes disposing of all village garbage, from solid waste to recyclables and bulk waste. "I think it's a fabulous deal," Sieban said. "It encompasses everything for us. It's a one stop shop."

According to Mirando, Omni will charge the village $69 per ton of garbage, compared with the $89 a ton it paid with the town. The village will truck the garbage directly to Omni in Babylon, Mirando explained, instead of trucking it to Rockville Centre's transfer station, as the Department of Public Works has in the past, where the town picked it up. Mirando said the additional fuel costs incurred by trucking the garbage to Babylon are less than the service fees the village would pay for using Rockville Centre's transfer station and having Omni pick it up from there. There is also no minimum or maximum garbage tonnage the village must adhere to, as it had in the prior contract with the town, he said.

The new deal also includes the disposal of yard waste -- like branches, leaves and grass clippings — which Omni charges $55 per ton. Omni will also take the village's recyclables and white metals, like washing machines and driers. The contract allows the village to recoup 80 percent of the monthly paper recycling revenue, which Mirando said was one of the key selling points in the contract. "This was one of things we requested in the contract," he said.

Within the next few months, the village will initiate a new recycling program, where all recyclables will be picked up together, rather than on separate days like in the current system.

Mirando explained that a percentage of the village's monthly bill will be put into an escrow account in case Omni defaults on the contract and can no longer dispose of the village's trash. The contract also stipulates that Omni must provide an alternative garbage disposal site if it cannot fulfill its duties, he said.

The disposal rate per ton, Mirando added, is based on the Consumer Price Index. If inflation goes up by 1 percent, Omni will have the right to raise its price by 1 percent. The contract states that the rate of increase cannot exceed 2.5 percent.

East Rockaway and other villages began having problems with the town contract a few years after they signed on in 1984. In 1988, when the town signed a garbage disposal contract with American Ref-Fuel -- the plant that Covanta purchased in 2005 -- each village was charged a basic fee based on the volume of refuse it was expected to produce. Once recycling became prevalent, however, villages fell below those expected volumes, because recyclable items that were once included with regular garbage were now disposed of separately. Villages found themselves paying for garbage they weren't dumping.

More than a year ago, Mirando said, seven southwestern Nassau County villages -- Valley Stream, Lynbrook, East Rockaway, Freeport, Garden City, Malverne and Rockville Centre -- created a coalition and hired a consultant to detail the precise disposal and recycling needs of each village. Armed with that information, the coalition issued a joint Request for Proposals to find a garbage contractor. In the end, each village made its own decision on how to dispose of its trash.

Comments about this story? ABottan@liherald.com or (516) 569-4000 ext. 246.