Transfer station needs to raise rates to stay out of the red

It costs a pretty penny to throw garbage away, and not everyone wants to spend it. 

The Regional Board of Mayors is proposing a 33% increase in rates at the Delano Regional Transfer Station, which is on track to lose up to $150,000 a year, but the city of Grand Coulee doesn’t want to raise rates that much. All the local city councils must approve a raise before it can take effect.

The county landfill in Ephrata, to where the garbage from Delano currently ships, hadn’t raised its rates in 13 years, but did this year.

That 71.28% jump from $28.80 per ton to $49.33 after tax, results in about $75,000 in additional fees paid by the local facility in Delano, out of which Manager Randy Gumm previously reported hauling 3,400 to 3,500 tons of local trash annually.

And so in 2021, rates in Delano were raised for the first time since 2010 from $12.40 to $15 for the first 209 pounds, and from 6.2 to 6.9 cents per additional pound.

The transfer station also began charging $5.25 per appliance for clean metal appliances, something they didn’t charge for in the past.

Those raises cover a lot of the additional costs the dump was facing, but not all, with rising fuel costs and repair costs on an aging dump truck also costing some pretty pennies.

Fuel prices went up as well, with the transfer station’s fuel bill going up from about $12,500 in 2020 to a projected total of $17,500 for 2021. 

At the RBOM’s Nov. 17 meeting, Electric City Clerk Peggy Nevsimal showed that the transfer station was on track to lose roughly $100,000 to $150,000 this year, depending on whether this year they pay $20,000 into a fund for a new truck, $10,000 into an employee severance fund for retirements, and $15,000 into a “post-closure fund” required by the Department of Ecology to cover issues that might arise from an old landfill.

The transfer station may qualify for a waiver of the $15,000 post-closure fund payment from the DOE because of the current budget crunch with truck and employee funds.

In 2022, the transfer station would be on track to lose $150,000 again if they didn’t raise their rates.

With other new cost increases this year, such as insurance rates and employee wages rising, and the county landfill likely to raise their rates again in the next year or two, the transfer station needs to generate even more money to offset those costs, so the mayors saw the need to raise the rates at Delano enough to get out of the red and into the black. 

The group ultimately decided to raise the gate fees from $15 to $20 for the first 208 pounds and from 6.9 to 9.22 cents per additional pound.

This would make for a tonnage rate increase of 33% from 138.60 per ton to $184.34.

Elmer City Mayor Jesse Tillman encouraged the group to raise the gate price to an even $20, rather than a couple dollars less, reasoning that the customers won’t likely care much about a couple of dollars in change and that it wouldn’t hurt the “common pocket.” The other mayors agreed. 

Additionally, each of the four cities pays its individual garbage bill to Sunrise Disposal, which hauls in refuse from Electric City, Grand Coulee, Coulee Dam, and Elmer City to Delano. They pay another 15% of that amount into what is called the Delano Transfer Trust Fund, which pays for operational expenses, totaling about $87,000 this year from the four cities.

The RBOM voted to raise that rate from 15% to 20% which would bring in an additional amount of roughly $28,000.

Altogether, if the transfer station gets that $15,000 post-closure fee waiver from DOE, the changes are projected to take the transfer station out of the red and into the black between $71,000 and $85,000 per year, at least until another raise at the county landfill happens.

Another factor playing into the scenario is that Sunrise Disposal will be raising their rates at least an additional 2.5%, maybe more now that the transfer stations rates are in the process of being raised. 

The 33% increase in rates at the transfer station will affect Sunrise’s rates, and those costs can be passed down to the garbage bills of the cities, and ultimately the garbage bills of residents and businesses. 

The four town councils must first approve the changes before the RBOM can adopt them, with Elmer City having approved the changes at their Nov. 18 meeting, but Grand Coulee not approving it at their Nov. 23 meeting. Their council generally agreed that they want a better solution.

Grand Coulee has voted against raises at the transfer station in the past, most recently in March of 2020. 

Nevsimal hopes the decisions are finalized soon as she works on the 2022 RBOM budget.