New Garbage Regime Gives Rise to Stink

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Six days’ worth of trash bags piled up behind Mark Van Gessel’s Hinano Café in Venice.

The city of Los Angeles had just launched a trash-hauling franchise system, which rolled out in June and July, putting the responsibility for all commercial and multifamily properties’ garbage removal in the hands of seven companies.

The bags eventually spilled out of the trash enclosure and into the alley behind Hinano, which usually had its trash taken away daily. Neighbors upset over the blight and smell called Van Gessel to complain.

Van Gessel said he in turn called his new hauler, City of Industry-based Athens Services Inc., and the Los Angeles Bureau of Sanitation, but received no response. Finally, the garbage was hauled away on the seventh day.

“What upsets me the most is that I had been in contact with the city prior to all this and (had been) promised that people would be notified and it would be rolled out with proper planning,” Van Gessel said. “None of that happened. It’s what I call poor planning, poor execution and poor customer service.”

His experience was not unique. All over Los Angeles, business and apartment building owners have been complaining about missed trash pickups during the transition, according to industry and city officials.

“We’ve been getting calls every day about this,” said Fred Sutton, policy director at the Apartment Association of Greater Los Angeles, which represents apartment landlords throughout Los Angeles County. “It was the No. 1 issue at our last monthly meeting.”

Bureau of Sanitation officials said last week that it received an average of 90 calls a day in July from commercial and multifamily property owners complaining about service issues, primarily missed pickups. That adds up to more than 2,000 calls, though that might include some repeat callers.

Dan Meyers, the Sanitation Bureau’s division manager in charge of the new waste-hauling franchise program, said that’s still only a fraction of the total of 30,000 commercial accounts that had transitioned to the franchise system through the end of July. An additional 25,000 will be transitioned over the next five months, while roughly 25,000 will remain with their current hauler.

Athens has already taken on about 13,000 new accounts, while jettisoning about 10,000 customers now outside their franchise zones, said Greg Loughnane, the company’s president.

Loughnane said that while Athens has picked up 22 exclusive franchise contracts in other cities over the years, this is by far the largest single transfer of new accounts in the company’s history. Athens brought on 200 additional employees, besides drivers, to help with the transition.

“We have a company standard of no missed service to our customers,” he said. “Of course, with something of this magnitude, some problems are inevitable. We are working to make sure that going forward, these problems will not continue.”

Seven bidders were chosen late last year to serve as exclusive haulers for a decade in 11 franchise zones; they are expected to reap more than $3 billion in revenue over that time. Athens is the largest contractor by far, with three of the zones.

The others are: CalMet Services of Paramount, NASA Services of Montebello, Republic Services of Phoenix, Universal Waste Systems of Santa Fe Springs, Ware Disposal of Santa Ana and Waste Management Inc. of Houston.

Abandoned customers

The haulers and the city had more than six months to prepare for the transition, and L.A. officials last week defended their efforts.

“Nothing as big as this has been attempted anywhere in the country,” said Heather Repenning, a commissioner on the Board of Public Works, which oversees the Sanitation Bureau. “We knew going into this that there would be some issues with missed pickups.”

Repenning and Meyers gave two main reasons for the missed pickups.

Truck drivers for the new franchise holders were still learning their routes and might have missed some addresses, they said. Also, some of the old haulers who didn’t get franchises apparently abandoned some customers prematurely.

Officials said the city hasn’t tracked these nonfranchise haulers and doesn’t know which were previously collecting at which locations.

The bureau set up a hotline – (800) 773-2489 – to deal with missed pickups and other service-related complaints during the transition. Once a complaint comes in, the city forwards it to the franchise hauler who is supposed to service the area. If the pickup service is not resumed within 24 to 48 hours, Repenning said the city sends out its crews to pick up trash.

Meyers said the abandoned accounts get highest priority.

Athens’ Loughnane said one of the biggest issues behind the missed pickups is that the lists of customers handed over to them by the old haulers often are incomplete or out of date. Also, there have been occasional problems in obtaining gate codes for underground garages where trash bins are kept.

In any event, Loughnane said that once notified of a missed pickup, Athens sends out a truck either that day or the next.

The apartment association’s Sutton said that in every case of missed pickups, the trash has eventually been collected within a week to 10 days, but the sheer number of complaints surprised him.

“Of course we expected a few instances of missed pickups, but to this degree, that definitely was not expected,” he said.

One apartment building owner said trash was not picked up for nearly two weeks at one of his properties, a five-unit building in West Adams, across from the First AME Church.

“Although I had only one missed pickup, that was enough to cause the trash to overflow the bin and I had to put bags on the pavement,” said Harold Greenberg, an attorney and board member of the apartment association.

He said he called his new hauler, Republic, three times and the city twice. But the trash didn’t get picked up until the following week.

Republic didn’t respond to a request for comment.

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