RIRRC: Landfill too dependent on biz fees

TREASURE OR TRASH? Mike OConnell, executive director of the R.I. Resource Recovery Corporation, says that businesses have the choice to take commercial waste elsewhere, so the Johnston landfill must compete for its solid waste on a regional scale. / PBN PHOTO/ MICHAEL SALERNO
TREASURE OR TRASH? Mike OConnell, executive director of the R.I. Resource Recovery Corporation, says that businesses have the choice to take commercial waste elsewhere, so the Johnston landfill must compete for its solid waste on a regional scale. / PBN PHOTO/ MICHAEL SALERNO

Businesses have long been subsidizing the cost of municipal solid waste in Rhode Island, as municipalities have paid the same rate to dump trash for more than two decades while receiving some of that back from landfill profits.

But time is running out on the status quo and a systemic change is likely coming soon.

The Johnston-based R.I. Resource Recovery Corporation, known colloquially as the central landfill, is the only statewide solid waste disposal site. Each municipality, except Tiverton, is required by law to send its garbage to the landfill, paying $32 per ton, which has been dubbed the “tipping fee.”

The municipal tipping fee has gone unchanged since 1992, whereas the commercial tipping fee is $55 per ton and fluctuates year to year based on system costs. The tipping fees and sales from recovered materials – such as recyclables – wholly fund the quasi-public system.

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But Rhode Island cities and towns receive back about half of RIRRC’s profit, which is divvied up based on how much they’ve dumped in any given year. The organization has returned about $5 million to municipalities since 2007.

Michael OConnell, executive director of RIRRC, notes that businesses have the choice to take commercial waste elsewhere, so the landfill must compete for its solid waste on a regional scale with Massachusetts and Connecticut.

The commercial side delivers about 40 percent of the revenue generated from an estimated 750,000 tons of waste per year. Increasing the municipal tipping fee, OConnell says, would alleviate some pressure from the dependency on the commercial side and the landfill could monetarily justify taking in less volume, thus extending its lifetime capacity, which – if continuing with the status quo – is set to expire in 2038.

“I’ve been arguing that we’ve got to dislodge the pricing and the fee setting from the political process,” said OConnell, who suggests the creation of a Tip Fee Commission for Municipal Pricing Reform to determine the optimal tipping fee rate that could fund the system at a desired load.

Currently, the General Assembly sets and approves the municipal tipping fee as a part of each year’s state budget, but OConnell says the fee has become so “institutionalized” that it’s approved each year, “like a rite of passage.

“We need to be able to set the fees in order to make sure we have enough revenue to pay our operating expenses,” OConnell said.

RIRRC, formerly known as the Rhode Island Solid Waste Management Corp., has a history pockmarked with cronyism, malpractice, suspected fraud and general mismanagement. A 2009 governor-ordered audit sparked an overhaul of the entire system. RIRRC, led by OConnell, has reduced its solid waste disposal volume 35 percent, from 1.1 million tons in 2007. The organization has also reduced spending by $26 million – or 40 percent – and cut one-third of its staff.

The reductions have allowed RIRRC to continue operations and prevent rates from rising too much on the commercial side, but OConnell worries that as volume declines – which is something they strive to accomplish – so does revenue.

Without some sort of systematic change to the way Rhode Island deals with its municipal and commercial solid waste, future options will become scant and the cost of disposing solid waste will likely skyrocket for everyone.

The landfill’s finite amount of space in Johnston poses an awkward conversation for state and municipal lawmakers because while 2038 may feel like a long way off, OConnell says deadlines to make decisions about the future are coming soon.

Expanding or creating a new landfill is an option, but RIRRC – as a part of its 20-year plan – is also exploring other possibilities for both the short- and long-term on how to address the impending capacity issue.

Ideas, which will be fleshed out over the next five years, include transporting and disposing most of the state’s waste out of state, building a waste-to-energy facility or pursuing a “zero waste” objective and maximizing the use of organics, thus diverting waste from the landfill.

OConnell points out that waste management is an issue everywhere, so if Rhode Island could extend the lifetime of its central landfill as long as possible, there’s always the option that innovation catches up to the problem.

“Time is our friend. That’s why we’re [focused] on getting smaller, reducing the amount of waste and repurposing the finance capacity we have,” OConnell said. “Whatever we do, it has to work.” •

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