Column: Uneasy Sunday morning trash pickups wake Laguna Beach residents

The 25-ton garbage truck rumbled down the alley at sunrise Sunday and squealed to a stop.

On one side of the narrow alley is Urth Caffe in Laguna Beach. On the other side is a tight row of older, thinly insulated apartments with dozens of sleeping residents.

When the driver ambled out of the truck at 6:38 a.m. he left his door open, and loud pop music spilled out, bouncing around the concrete like an echo chamber.

The driver went about his duties as he has every other Sunday: Get the Urth trash bin, load the trash, lift it high into the air and shake it like a Polaroid.

For the residents who live just feet away, there is debate about what’s worse: the shaking or the “beep, beep, beep” sound that cuts deep.

In the bleariness of the morning, your temptation is to say, “Alexa, stop!”

It is early Sunday morning, after all, in laid-back Laguna where even the seagulls are still sleeping.

The problem, of course, is that the Waste Management driver has been arriving too soon.

“We’re sorry,” said Eloisa Orozco, Waste Management’s communications manager for Southern California. “You know what, your residents are actually correct. We pulled our records for the service in that area and unfortunately it looks like it’s a case of an employee going out there a little earlier than he should have been going.”

According to the city, garbage trucks should not arrive before 7 a.m. Frankly, on Sunday, it should be more like 10 a.m., but that’s just me.

“So, according to our service agreement, we should be out there no earlier than 7 a.m.,” said Orozco, whose records indicate that for at least the past four Sundays, residents have had an early wake-up call. “It shows our truck was out there to service between 6:38 and 6:49 a.m. We are going to be speaking to our driver and reminding him the importance of not going out there before the time, which is 7 a.m.”

What’s interesting here is that residents near Urth just took it in stride, for the most part. Everyone just assumed it was part of life with Urth: the bustle, trash, illegal smoking outside, and yes, an unholy garbage truck on Sunday — like a smelly sunrise service.

It wasn’t until residents started to huddle around their mailboxes and compare notes that they realized something seemed off. So they came to me, believing it’s easier to let the news guy do the dirty work.

Urth officials were quick to distance themselves from the trash details. Not surprisingly, they’re just trying to sell their food, coffee and those amazing little desserts. In fact, an Urth spokesman said the company doesn’t have control over pick-up times and leaves it up to the city and Waste Management.

Interestingly, the city’s code enforcement officer, Ross Corona, said that from Monday to Saturday, Waste Management usually comes to Urth at about 2 p.m.

Now that’s what I’m talking about. But why not 2 p.m. on Sunday?

We don’t know.

These are the mysteries of modern trash operations.

What we do know is that this issue is not new. Across the country, cities and residents have struggled to balance reasonable trash times with business demands.

In fact, there was one highly publicized case in Georgia a couple years ago where a garbage truck driver was arrested for picking up trash too early. In that case, the city of Sandy Springs had a similar noise ordinance that prevented pick-ups before 7 a.m., but the driver started working at 5 a.m. in order to get all of his run finished on time.

The driver actually had to serve a couple weekends in jail before they let him out.

While that seems excessive, if no one ever gets penalized, then why have the rules?

Clearly, it’s probably not the driver’s fault. He is either following orders or just trying to complete his work on time.

Businesses will always push the envelope in order to save time, cut costs, improve productivity, etc.

And residents will always feel the impact.

If it’s not a garbage truck at o-dark-thirty, it’s a smoker throwing a butt on the sidewalk in a city that banned smoking.

It’s a gasoline leaf blower in a city that banned blowers.

It’s a loud motorcycle revving its engine, violating the noise ordinance.

The reality is, it’s not for lack of violations; it’s a lack of complaints.

People either don’t feel empowered to call something in or don’t want to waste their time.

Unless, of course, that time starts at 6:38 a.m. on a Sunday.

DAVID HANSEN is a writer and Laguna Beach resident. He can be reached at hansen.dave@gmail.com.