Torrance Delays High-Tech Trash Pick-Up Plan

Any day now, Torrance expects to receive the first of five custom-built garbage trucks that cost the city almost $619,000.

But it will be months, if not longer, before the trucks are put to work in the automated trash hauling program envisioned by city officials when they recommended in June that the City Council buy them.

The council, which had approved the purchase, balked earlier this month at going ahead with the program.

The trucks are equipped with mechanized arms that lift and empty garbage cans while the driver remains in the cab. Officials had planned to have these trucks pick up trash at 80% of the single-family and duplex residences in the city.

Council members say they still think the new trucks may be more efficient and save money, but they want more proof that the plan will work.

Worrying that the oversized (64- to 101-gallon) garbage cans that would be used with the trucks may be too unwieldy, they have ordered a larger test of the program, which has been tried out in 54 homes for the past year.

Furthermore, several council members say they did not know that they were approving the purchase of automated trucks when they voted to buy five replacement trucks for almost $124,000 each.

They are also annoyed because they did not realize that the Street Maintenance Department and the city manager’s office were asking them to authorize automated trash collection for most of the city with that June vote.

Several council members said last week that they discovered only in the past two months that the five trucks are automated.

“I knew we had ordered five trucks, but I didn’t know we’d ordered the self-dumping trucks,” said Councilman Bill Applegate.

City staff members, who had been working on automating garbage hauling for months, found the plan especially attractive because it would make money and trucks available to support the city’s separate curbside recycling program.

“Purely and simply, the staff had so many internal discussions that they got ahead of the council,” said Mayor Katy Geissert. “They assumed that we knew a lot more and had approved a lot more than we actually had.”

Torrance is the only South Bay city that still collects municipal refuse from residents of its single- and two-family residences rather than relying on a private garbage company.

The city uses about 20 conventional garbage trucks to haul trash from those 30,000 residences. If the homes border an alley, it employs an automated system to collect trash deposited in 300-gallon bins.

Trash from the city’s multi-family dwellings and businesses is hauled by private firms.

City officials say automated trucks pick up trash twice as fast as conventional trucks, said Richard Garcia, street maintenance superintendent.

Garcia said the original plan called for gradually phasing in automated pick-up for 80% of Torrance’s one- and two-family homes. The city would need 10 automated trucks at that point, he said.

Those plans are now on hold.

A Dec. 10 memo to the council from the city manager’s office says the agenda item that authorized purchase of the five trucks “was not clear” to the council. As a result, it says, the council did not realize that “these trucks were replacing conventional refuse trucks, and that the new trucks were automated vehicles.”

To deal with the problem, the memo offers several alternatives, including delaying the program and reselling the automated trucks at a possible loss of $50,000 to $100,000 to cover depreciation and repainting to the buyer’s preferred color. When they are delivered, the trucks will be yellow to match other Torrance city equipment.

Instead, the council asked this month that the staff design a large-scale test of automated pick-up before proceeding with the full program. The smaller pilot project served 54 homes on the former Perry School site near Prairie Avenue.

“I was opposed to jumping from a sampling of a couple of dozen people to a massive expenditure on a system that we don’t know is practical or applicable,” said Councilman Dan Walker.

Plans for the larger test are expected to go to the council in January. The test will probably involve 6,000 homes and use two of the new garbage trucks, said Kathy Keane, assistant to the city manager.

That will require buying about 7,000 containers, at $50 to $60 apiece, Keane said. The city will probably test both the 64-gallon and 101-gallon cans, she said.

Some council members and residents have questioned whether the large wheeled containers--which are designed to fit the trucks--will be manageable.

Garcia has recommended using the larger container. But some council members say it may be too large for elderly residents to handle.

“You go ahead and tip it over, and if you don’t have much strength it might bury you,” Applegate said.

Councilman Tim Mock has requested that council members’ homes be included in the larger test.

The test will probably not begin until April, which means the council probably will not decide until summer whether to approve the full program, Keane said.

That, in turn, will delay the launch of a citywide recycling program. One of the benefits of automated trash hauling would be more curbside recycling.

A pilot recycling project is now serving 4,000 residences weekly, Garcia said. The automated trucks were expected to replace eight conventional trucks. Garcia planned to re-outfit six of the old trucks to expand the recycling project citywide by midsummer, 1991.

The recycling program uses modified garbage trucks to collect newspaper, glass, aluminum and plastics from bins that residents set out at the curb.

Now, citywide recycling is not expected to start until late 1991 or early 1992, Keane said.

Most council members say the automated system will probably be approved. If not, city officials said, the automated trucks could be resold to other cities.

“In my opinion,” Keane said, “This is the state of the art.”