Wars, Scandals And Chaos? Us? It’s About Garbage!

While wars rage, scandals swirl and chaos erupts in all corners of the globe, here at home in the Cowichan Valley, the heated issue of the day is the future collection of residential garbage and recycling.  Our local government, the Cowichan Valley Regional District (CVRD) have announced that as of June 1, 2013 they will be taking over the job of collecting trash and recyclables from existing private contractors.

The reason given by the CVRD for taking over collection is that the bids from the private haulers came in way too high and efforts to negotiate lower costs failed.  The CVRD then determined they could do the job at less cost to the taxpayers and so they decided they will not renew the contracts when they expire in May, 2013. 

We received our notice from the municipality last week indicating that our bill for collection will be reduced by 10% next year with the takeover by the CVRD while our service schedule remains the same.  There’s no ideological question here at all as far as I’m concerned.  If the CVRD can do this job at less cost to us then I’m all for it. 

In fact, I quit the private contractor pick-up service over 2 years ago because it was getting too expensive.  Ever since, I’ve been hauling our trash to the CVRD transfer station myself.

In addition to the reduced cost of collection, each household in the district will be receiving 2 new totes – one for trash and the other for recyclables.  These easy-roll totes will be provided free and are designed to be emptied using a mechanical arm from the CVRD’s automated collection trucks. 

As one might expect, not everyone is happy with this decision by the CVRD.  A protest group calling themselves Stop CVRD Garbage is circulating a petition trying to gather enough signatures to force a referendum.  They need to get 10% of eligible voters to sign so the group will have until 4:30pm, Nov. 26 to gather at least 2,550 signatures on forms objecting to the CVRD’s tote-and-truck plan. 

So, no matter what’s going on in the rest of the world, for the next week or so around here it’s just going to be all about garbage.  I guess we could have it a lot worse!

Have a great Tuesday, and thanks again for visiting!