‘A great start’: 2,000 garbage pick-ups missed on first day with new contractors

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This article was published 03/10/2017 (2983 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

More than 150 households in a River Heights housing co-op were among hundreds of homes across the city that were bypassed in garbage and recycling collection Monday, the first day of operation by two new contractors.

City hall said about 2,000 pick-ups — of waste, recyclables and yard waste — were missed on Monday, reflecting 2 per cent of the 103,600 trips that should have been done on the first day.

“The contractors had a great start yesterday,” a civic spokeswoman said. The 2,000 missed pick-ups affected about 667 city households.

But River Heights resident Morley Fingard said he isn’t impressed with the results of the collections on the first day under new contractors.

Fingard said Miller Waste Systems, which won the garbage and recycling pick-up contract for the west side of the city, missed his entire townhouse complex on Carpathia Road – 152 homes – making him nostalgic for the former contractor, Emterra.

Emterra “never, ever missed our complex, ever, not once,” Fingard said. “We’re paying millions more and we’re behind the 8-ball from the get-go.”

The city awarded the waste and recycling contract to new firms, Miller and GFL Environmental Inc. Each was given a seven-year, three-month contract, with a combined total annual cost of $24.7 million — $6.7 million more than the previous contract.

Emterra had drawn the ire of homeowners across the city after it was awarded the contract in 2012 for curbside pick-up of the city’s new blue and grey rolling bins. The firm was criticized for late and missed pick-ups for the past five years. The company also had technical problems with its vehicles, which occasionally broke down.

Fingard said a garbage and recycling trucks came to his complex Tuesday morning, along with what appeared to be a civic supervisor and another individual who was taking photos of where the rolling blue and grey bins are located.

Fingard said he wasn’t impressed with how the new crews were working, comparing them again to Emterra’s crews.

“The Emterra crew worked at a lighting speed compared to what these guys were doing,” Fingard said, adding if how the new crews worked Tuesday is any indication, he’s concerned pick-ups will be late every day across the city. The new contractor “can’t possibly do the routes in the same amount of time the old contractor did.”

But the civic spokeswoman said Monday’s roll-out went according to plan.

“We expected collection would be completed slower than normal for the first two weeks of the new contract, to account for new trucks, new routes and new drivers/employees,” the spokeswoman said in an email.

Contractor crews worked until 9:30 pm Monday and had covered the day’s missed pick-ups by 12:30 pm Tuesday.

The spokeswoman said 311 received 151 reports of missed pick-ups on Monday. In comparison, when Emterra first went into operation in the fall of 2012, 311 had received 251 reports on the first day.

Pick-ups should go quicker Tuesday, as the contractors schedules finds them dealing with fewer homes than the day before. The spokeswoman said Miller and GFL have brought in extra crews for the first two weeks and the city has also contracted a third company to assist in areas of high risk of arson.

The spokeswoman said homeowners should leave their carts out until 10 pm but if they’re not picked up, to put them away and put them out again by 7 a.m. the following morning.

aldo.santin@freepress.mb.ca