Waste System Costs $180 Million to Start

The new waste collection program will not come cheaply. It requires more than $180 million in start-up costs, although once in place, the new system will be no more expensive to operate because of automation and other improvements.

The start-up expenses will be spread over seven years. The money primarily will go to buy automated trash collection trucks, recycling vehicles and containers for trash and recyclables, and to modify many of the city’s garbage trucks.

Most of the money for the new equipment will come from the $3 sanitation equipment fee that appears on every Los Angeles homeowner’s monthly Department of Water and Power bill. This fee generates about $22 million per year, said Sanitation Bureau Recycling Manager Drew Sones.

The rest will come from the general sanitation budget. With the city feeling a financial pinch, there is talk that Mayor Tom Bradley will cut some requests before he submits this year’s budget to the City Council in April, Sones said. He said the Bureau of Sanitation’s budget request could be cut as a result.

“I think we’d be cut, just like any city program,” he said. The result would be that the city would “extend the rollout, rather than stop it,” thus delaying the schedule, he said.

Although the city will receive some revenue from the sale of recyclables, it will offset only a small portion of the program’s cost. The city is projecting it will receive $3.5 million next year from recyclables.

The city’s expenses for recycling include paying a private vendor to separate the various items--bottles, metal, plastics, newspapers--brought in by recycling trucks. The vendor will sell the recyclables, and the city will share in the profits, Sones said.

The biggest expense is new equipment. Most of that money will be spent on the 60-gallon containers that will eventually be distributed citywide, Sones said. At about $50 each, the 1.27 million containers needed over the next three years will cost $64.7 million. The city will also buy 141,000 90-gallon containers at a cost of $8.2 million.

The automated collection trucks are another significant expense. The city has already bought 46 automated trucks for $130,000 each, and it will buy 260 more.

The front-loading, manually operated trucks currently used by city sanitation workers cost $118,000 each. The city will convert 245 of these trucks to automatic collection by adding a hydraulic arm, at a cost of $35,000 per truck, Sones said.

The Bureau of Sanitation has already purchased 53 recycling trucks that it is using in its pilot programs. The city will buy 142 more of the trucks over the next five years at a cost of $80,460 per truck.

The sanitation fleet eventually will comprise 550 automatic collection trucks, 192 recycling trucks and 65 manual trucks, which the city is keeping for special collections. Each truck is operated by a single sanitation worker.

Once established, the new system will require three city trucks to stop at each household one day a week--for household trash, recyclables and yard trimmings. Currently, each house requires just one stop a week from one truck.

But Sones said the system will be no more costly, largely because it will not require expansion of the 800-person work force. Automated pickup is much faster than manual, enabling drivers to work longer routes. Also, many will take their loads to transfer stations rather than all the way to landfills.

Even so, overall disposal costs will rise in the years ahead because of salary increases and higher dump tipping fees.