Trash Firms Vow to Keep City Contracts

The attorney for the family-owned trash and recycling companies that are under criminal investigation has told city officials that they will not get out of the long-term contracts easily.

The companies, Orange Disposal Service and Orange Resource Recovery Systems, had received letters from City Atty. David De Berry in early July informing them that they were in breach of contract. Such breaches are termed “defaults” which, if not “cured,” allow the city to terminate the contracts.

Orange Disposal Services, which is owned by the Hambarian family, has been the city’s only trash hauler for 42 years. The current contract runs until 2000. In 1994, the family founded Orange Resource Recovery, an affiliate company, to recover and recycle trash; that contract runs for at least 10 more years.

City officials were tipped off in early 1995 of allegations of serious accounting irregularities at the recycling company and one informant has said that as much as $6 million due the city may have been stolen.

Z. Harry Astor, attorney for both companies, flatly denied the allegations.

“We believe that all alleged defaults have now been cured, and [the two companies] will firmly resist any effort by the city to attempt to terminate either contract,” Astor wrote in a letter dated July 17.

De Berry withheld the letter until Tuesday, when he said that the companies’ responses to initial concerns showed a “good-faith first effort” to resolve the defaults. He said also that more issues need to be negotiated.