Blue cart net bill: $2.89 per month
Hatters will pay lowest prices in Western Canada for curbside recycling
The overall effect of adding blue cart curbside recycling pickup service in Medicine Hat will be $2.89 per month on residential customers’ bills, city officials said Friday.
The addition of the charge will be introduced at Tuesday’s city council meeting, accompanied by reductions for general pickup and current waste diversion fees.
Those fall because lower volumes are expected in regular trash cans and at bulk recycling drop-off depots, thereby lowering those operational costs.
Administrators also say that they currently aren’t considering reductions to general pickup, perhaps to twice monthly, or close depots, until they can study how curbside pickup affects volumes.
“We want to get the program fully established and ... there’s no timeline right now for when we’d look at changes to other pickup ... we’ll allow time for that to happen,” said environmental utilities general manager Brian Murphy during a media information session on Friday.
“It’s important that we gather the data on how successful the program is and that will allow us to look at future iterations of the program or other changes.
“It’s something we’ll be doing over the course of this year.”
Curbside recycling is already underway for homes that received carts since the beginning of May, but the charge won’t take effect until the beginning of July when the city expects all 23,000 carts to have been distributed.
At that time, pending council approval, a new charge will be $6.31 in an average month after July 1. At the same time, other monthly rates would decrease by a combined $3.42 for general collection (down by $2.09) and waste diversion fee (down by $1.33).
The overall difference in an increase of just under $3 — well below the $5per-month target that council set when it approved the service in principle in March 2017.
The effect on bills could mean that Hatters will pay the lowest price in Western Canada for curbside recycling pickup service, according to a study of the issue presented last year during curbside debate in council.
Preliminary estimates pegged the cost anywhere between $6 to $11 to add blue bins to existing service, or between $2 to $7, if all collections converted to a twice-monthly schedule.
The eventual contract award in early 2017, to Red Deer-based CanPak Environmental, cited a per-house cost of $4.66 per month, while that company would supply trucks, staff and buy the city’s sorting facility.
The difference between the monthly charge and contract estimate is the result of administration costs of general recycling being removed from general fee to a residential recycling fee, said Murphy.
That provides a more clear view of costs, he said.
“The bottom line is the net increase is $2.89 per month, with all the costs included.”
The “Waste Diversion fee” covers costs of operating city drop-off depots, as well as hazardous waste disposal of paint and oil at the landfill.
That would drop from $3.64 per month to $2.31, reflecting lower volumes, and therefore fewer pickups, at the depot sites now operated by CanPak.
All four current depots — at Kipling Street, REDI and Shamrock bottle depots, and the Medicine Hat Mall — will remain open for use by condo owners and those with overflow amounts, as well as glass.
Elected officials have said the biggest benefit is diverting material from the city’s existing landfill, thereby extending its lifespan.
Utility committee chair, Coun. Phil Turnbull, told council two weeks ago that commissioning a new landfill could cost up to $40 million.
Closing the current landfill in 2035, a date based on current tonnage, could cost $13 million, according to the city’s latest annual financial statements.
Last spring, an annual review of capital projects revealed the incoming curbside service and contracting it out led to the cancellation of $20 million in approved projects related to the landfill.
“By extending the life of the landfill a project like this has future benefits that we can’t even quantify at this point,” said Murphy.
“They are costly endevours. The more success we have diverting waste from the landfill, the bigger the benefit to residents.”
In January, fees rose by about 42 cents per month, moving the average monthly bill to $21.77. After July 1, the average would be $24.66