SOUTH HADLEY — After severe weather and broken equipment caused delays in trash pickup across South Hadley over the last month, town officials are promising to do better moving forward.
“First of all I want to apologize to the residents of South Hadley,” Town Administrator Michael Sullivan said at a Select Board meeting last week. “There was a succession of errors that caused this that we had to deal with. There wasn’t one area of South Hadley over the last four weeks that hasn’t suffered from this issue.”
The entire town had been behind on trash collection for about one month, and officials notified the trash collection company, Republic Services, Sullivan said. Trash pickup is now back on its regular schedule, officials said.
Property owners in town pay an annual $65 fee for trash removal, plus the purchase of special “green” bags to put their garbage in. The town pays Republic Services about $829,000 per year for waste removal for about 5,800 households and businesses.
“We have brought this up to the contractor,” Sullivan said. “We have told them it’s unacceptable. We reminded them that their contract is up this year.”
The contract expires in June and is subject to renewal, according to Sullivan.
Officials at Republic Services did not respond for comment Monday.
Leonard Finkowski, president of the Hillcrest Park condominium association, brought the matter to the Select Board’s attention at last week’s meeting.
“I’d like to air our complaint, and we’d like to know why the trash wasn’t picked up on the designated day on those two specific days that were in the paper and on printed document in Town Hall,” Finkowski said.
After trash was not picked up at the scheduled time weeks ago, he said, strong winds blew it around the condo complex, forcing residents to pick it up. Friends living elsewhere in town, such as the Shadow Brook Estates, told Finkowski their trash had not been collected for one month, until recently.
Select Board Chairwoman Sarah Etelman offered an explanation. She said weeks ago, a Republic Services truck broke down for several days. A severe snowstorm then compounded the problem, she said.
“As they were still recovering from that we had a snowstorm and it was planned they were not going to be picking up on that day,” Etelman said at the Jan. 16 meeting. “There was no way to get that into the Town Reminder in time.”
Etelman said the town made the schedule changes public on its social media pages. The holiday season also complicated the trash collector’s schedule, according to the board.
“There were delays, they have been acknowledged and addressed by the DPW,” Etelman said.
In response to these complaints, the town temporarily extended hours of operation at the transfer station, started independently picking up old Christmas trees and created a response team to help residents for whom trash had accumulated.
According to Sullivan, the town considered hiring a second contractor to pick up the slack, but it was not allowed in the contract agreement.
Republic Services is based in Phoenix and is the second-largest waste management company in the nation based on revenue. The company services about 2,700 municipalities and employs approximately 30,000 people, according to their website.
In South Hadley, the holidays that affect curbside collection are New Year’s Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Sarah Robertson can be reached at srobertson@gazettenet.com.