A hefty challenge

Last week, city officials and sanitation industry bigwigs hashed out a plan to radically overhaul the way businesses take out their trash, an effort to rein in a cutthroat industry with often unsafe labor conditions and an unchecked excess of pollution-spewing trucks.

The reorganization is well intended but carries serious risks, especially for small businesses that need a complicated and potentially expensive new regulatory regime for handling a basic function like a hole in the head.

The new blueprint would discard the current free-for-all, where about 90 companies roam across the boroughs with no rhyme or reason to their routes, and carve the city into at least 20 commercial waste zones. Regulators would allow up to three carters per zone. (Separately, up to five companies citywide will be allowed to collect trash put in giant containers by roughly 600 huge commercial office buildings and hospitals.)

To win approval, haulers will have to replace much of their fleet with low-emissions vehicles and up their labor standards.

Breathe a sigh of relief the Council trashed an earlier plan allowing just one carter per zone, a scheme conducive to corruption that yielded spectacularly bad results in Los Angeles.

The newer plan is better but it’s untested. We wish the bill gave the city a parachute clause allowing more carters be added per zone if emergencies arise.

We also question the wisdom of limiting every neighborhood, whether sleepy Douglaston or bustling Midtown, to three carters each, when the Sanitation Department’s own careful research suggests five is closer to the magic number in the busiest parts of the city.

The city must keep an eye on pricing, almost certain to increase given all the new mandates.

Finally, we worry trash haulers trying to meet city goals of traveling fewer miles will narrow options for businesses requiring tailored pickup schedules. Which will lead trash to sit on the sidewalk for hours. Which will lead to more rot and more rats.

We don’t need more rats.