Sacramento residents face 11 percent hike in garbage bills

Sacramento ratepayers might face a nearly 11 percent increase for curbside garbage pickup this summer, thanks partly to the rising cost of trucking the city's trash 141 miles to a dump in the western Nevada desert.

The proposed increase, which the Sacramento City Council will vote on in June, would be the largest spike in a decade. It would increase a typical bill for a 90-gallon container from $16.68 a month to $18.43 a month. In 2004, that service cost $14.30, according to the city.

"When we started this contract (10 years ago), diesel was under a dollar a gallon. Today, it's about $4.30 a gallon," said Shawn Gutterson, president of BLT Enterprises, the private company that hauls the city's garbage to the Lockwood Landfill, east of Reno. "It's becoming unbearable."

The rising fuel costs are pressuring the city to find alternative ways to dispose of the 146,000 tons of trash it picks up every year. Environmentalists have also railed against the diesel-powered trans-Sierra haul, saying it undermines the city's quest to become "America's Greenest City."

No major city in California hauls its garbage even half as far.

Edison Hicks, the city's solid waste director, said Sacramento's goal is to stop sending garbage to Lockwood within two years, but the city must rework several long-standing contracts to do that.

City leaders are in talks with BLT and Sacramento County to reroute the majority of trash to the county-operated Kiefer Landfill, 19 miles from downtown Sacramento in Sloughhouse. Sacramento also has entered into an exclusive 90-day negotiating agreement with U.S. Science and Technology to build a $150 million to $200 million plant that would use an emerging – some say unproven – technology to turn the waste into energy.

Whatever route the city takes, sending a fleet of 22 diesel trucks over the Sierra every night, packed with Sacramento's garbage, "is simply not sustainable," said Scott Smithline, director of legal and regulatory affairs for Sacramento-based Californians Against Waste. Smithline also said the city could be doing far more to promote recycling.

The BLT fleet gets five to seven miles a gallon and spews as much air pollution as 1,200 ordinary vehicles on its way to Lockwood, according to the state Air Resources Board.

Hicks said he and City Councilwoman Lauren Hammond plan a trip to Japan this month to visit one of the world's only functioning "plasma arc gasification" plants. Although cities such as Los Angeles have long studied the technology, no American city has actually yet built a plant.

"We're not yet sold on this technology, but we're doing our due diligence to see if it pencils out financially and environmentally," Hicks said.

The proposed garbage hike is part of a broader plan to raise fees on all utilities services, from sewer to water and street sweeping. The new fee also reflects rising labor costs and new equipment needed to meet ever-tougher state pollution standards.

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