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MINUTES OF THE METRO COUNCIL

REGIONAL ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT COMMITTEE MEETING

Wednesday, July 21, 1999

Council Chamber

Chair Washington called the meeting to order at 1:36 PM.

1.  CONSIDERATION OF THE MINUTES OF JUNE 23, 1999

Chair Washington noted that a citizen, Jeanne Roy, who testified at the last meeting, had called to request the minutes be corrected as follows. On page 5, her response to Councilor Park’s question should read, “...all the programs she had suggested in her testimony.” Chair Washington asked that the minutes be so corrected.

2.  REGIONAL ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT DIRECTOR’S UPDATE

Terry Petersen, Acting Director of the Regional Environmental Management Department, announced that the City of Portland’s Council had voted to change the way material is sorted for curbside recycling. The new sort would involve one yellow bin for scrap paper, separated from corrugated cardboard and magazines. A second yellow container would have plastic bottles and cans in it. Glass of all colors would be mixed together at the curbside and put in a container that has yet to be determined. It would then be sorted by the haulers before it goes into the truck. Mr. Petersen said Metro and the local governments are working together to make the curbside changes uniform throughout the Metro region.

Chair Washington asked for more details.

Meg Lynch, Waste Reduction Supervisor, REM, said the glass would be kept separate from other materials, but not sorted by color. She did not know what kind of container would be specified. She said Portland’s Bureau of Environmental Services staff would make that decision.

Mr. Peterson gave a summary of the department’s recent activities. (The summary has been attached to the meeting record.) Items included the following:

•  REM sponsored a successful Natural Gardening Tour last weekend.

•  REM worked with the Department of Environmental Quality on Aerosol Awareness Week, to raise awareness of how aerosols contribute to air pollution.

•  The REM department developed two new more performance measures, which will be used within the department for budgeting and management. Both of these relate to safety. Two more measures are under development, and they relate to the effectiveness of the hazardous waste program and the waste-reduction grant program.

•  The Tarped Load Enforcement program, which has been stepped up to encourage tarped loads at Metro South, has been successful so far and well-received by the public. Mr. Petersen showed a snapshot of two first-time customers who did not know the policy and had arrived untarped. After being stopped and told the reason for the tarping policy, they returned with a second load properly tarped, with a sign on the side of the truck that read “Tarp Up--It’s the Safe Way to Dump.”

•  A model airplane club had requested a special use permit to put a model-airplane flying facility at the old St. Johns Landfill. This application is still being processed.

Councilor Park asked about the tour of chemical-free gardens. He asked what was meant by “chemical free.” He said he assumed it meant synthetic chemicals as opposed to natural chemicals, such as concentrated tobacco juice. Mr. Petersen said that was correct--the purpose was to spread the word about alternatives to synthetic chemicals for home gardens.

Councilor Park asked about the conditional use permit. He asked if major problems were anticipated with the issuing the permit.

Mr. Petersen said several issues still need to be addressed before a permit could be issued, mainly security and safety. He noted that there is an active gas collection system on the site, and access to the landfill needs to be controlled. Also, the gas pipeline systems must be protected from damage. In addition, there needs to be a way to make sure club members would not be injured on the property. The club is working with its insurance company on liability issues, and the REM department is working on security and safety.

Councilor Park said he used to fly radio-controlled airplanes, and he understood how hard it was to find suitable sites to fly them. He sympathized with the club on that.

Councilor McLain asked if the department would share the performance measures once they have been finished. Mr. Petersen said he could provide the safety measures, but more work is needed on the other two. He expected to be able to bring those forward in the fall.

3.  RESOLUTION NO. 99-2818, FOR THE PURPOSE OF APPOINTING DEAN A. KAMPFER TO THE SOLID WASTE RATE REVIEW COMMITTEE

Mr. Petersen said approval of this resolution would support the Executive Officer’s appointment of Mr. Kampfer to the rate-review committee. He summarized Mr. Kampfer’s qualifications (included in the meeting record).

Councilor McLain will carry the motion to a meeting of the full Council.

4.  REGIONAL TRANSFER STATION SERVICE PLANNING

Bill Metzler, Senior Solid Waste Planner, REM, provided an update of the service planning. He said the June 23 Solid Waste Advisory Committee (SWAC) formed a subcommittee to work with the service plan team. The subcommittee consists of one representative from the recycling industry, two from the hauling industry, three from solid waste facilities, and three from local governments. Chair Washington volunteered to be an ad hoc member. The subcommittee held its first meeting on July 15 to define its role in working with the project team. The subcommittee determined it would function to represent stakeholder interests to the project team, which in turn would work to balance those interests.

The first meeting also identified what would needed to develop a statement of need for new regional transfer station services. The subcommittee also heard some preliminary findings from the commercial hauler survey and some draft solid waste flow projections. The survey results and flow projections are being refined and should be ready for presentation to the REM committee soon.

Mr. Metzler said the SWAC subcommittee identified several discussion items, including impacts of urban congestion on access to services for haulers and the public; regional priorities and how to balance recovery against disposal; how to balance private efficiencies and profit and the public purpose; the cost to rate-payers; and on how to maintain competition among haulers in the region.

The next meeting of the subcommittee will be August 5. Ultimately, the meetings should produce a statement of need. The REM committee would also be involved in the process at some point before a draft report is written, and it would review the draft report once it is written.

Councilor McLain asked Mr. Metzler about the statement of need the subcommittee would issue. She said she had understood the statement of need would include an assessment of the current service. However, she thought the assessment of current service was different from a statement of need. In her mind, a statement of need might include additional services or a demand for new resources. She saw that as distinctly different from a review of the current system. She suggested making those separate tasks. She also talked about cost. She said cost means different things to for- and non-profit agencies. She said that when discussing a public service, the public’s desires, needs, and willingness to pay must be factored into the discussions.

5.  EVALUATION REPORT ON THE REGIONAL SYSTEM FEE CREDIT PROGRAM

Mr. Petersen briefly recapped the program. He said this program had been budgeted at $900,000 this year and last year, to give a credit to the private, material-recovery facilities in the region on their regional system fee they pay to Metro, based on their recycling rate. The higher the rate, the greater the credit. Mr. Petersen said the purpose for the program was to try to keep the recovery rate high at all the private Material Recovery Facilities (MRFs) as Metro reduced its tip fee over the past year. He said that has not happened across the board. Some facilities have maintained high rates while others have dropped. He said he learned at SWAC that morning that this was due to the complexities of the system and the differences between companies.

Councilor McLain said that the differences are due in part to differences in what the facilities had elected to receive. She said that source separation and co-mingling have different effects. She said the different facilities have different configurations, at their request. They have different focuses, also at their request. She said Metro did not ask the facilities to become what they are. She asked what kind of leeway Metro should give the facilities.

Mr. Petersen said there are different factors that drive different companies when they make decision on whether to recycle. It varies from company to company.

Councilor McLain said Metro had instituted its program as a business choice to encourage recycling, and it should not back off from that.

Councilor Park asked for clarification about the program. He asked if the program was based entirely on incentives rather than penalties. Mr. Petersen said yes.

Leann Linson, gave highlights of the program, accompanied by a PowerPoint presentation. (Hard copies of the PowerPoint slides have been attached to the meeting record.) She said that prior to June of 1998, facilities had to obtain a recovery rate of 35% to 45% recovery. When the tip fee was lowered to $62.50/ton, the fee-credit pilot program was introduced to reduce the difference between costs and revenues.

Key findings from the pilot program recognize major changes in the solid waste system that took place while the pilot program was in place. As a result of the changes, the average overall recovery tonnage has dropped. However, this overall drop is not the result of a drop at all facilities, but only at those belonging to Waste Management, Inc. (WMI). Its drop was great enough to bring the whole average down. Others, such as Willamette Resources, Inc.(WRI), Pride Disposal, and East County Recycling (ECR), have maintained their rates.

Ms. Linson said that certain facility types could be expected to maintain rates. For example, independent dry-waste operations would continue to have high rates. Also, those that are vertically integrated and rate-regulated would continue to have high rates.

Regarding the recovery goals, Councilor Washington noted that only 72% of recovered tonnage counted toward Regional Solid Waste Management (RSWMP) goals, He asked what happened to the other 28%. Ms. Linson said that material such as bricks, concrete, and glass that do not count. She said staff has been working with the DEQ to see if those materials can be counted toward the goals.

She noted that if WMI continues with its low recovery rate, it could reduce Metro’s chances of achieving the RSWMP goals. She said lower disposal costs would make it harder to achieve the goals, even with credits and other incentives. Future rate reductions would increase the cost of the credit program. She emphasized that cost would not be the only consideration in deciding whether to continue to offer the credit; rather, the goal would be to encourage recovery.

Ms. Linson concluded that the program did not have the desired overall effect on total tons recovered, but rather MRF’s switched their focus to more non-recoverable waste streams. The program would need to either be modified or accompanied by alternatives to encourage more recovery. She said that SWAC had asked staff to continue to review the data and information, then return in October with a set of recommendations.

Councilor McLain, said she still supports the incentive approach to encouraging recovery. She understood that considerable change had taken place and that more information needed to be gathered on this program. She said no one wants to hear that by lowering the tip fee, the recycling rate goes down. That suggests first, perhaps the tip fee should not be reduced, and second, that alternatives to incentives might need to be explored. She said this issue would need more than a few months’ work to explore short-term ideas and system-wide ideas. She said this issues directly relates to the service systems plan. She said Metro’s mission is not only to dispose of garbage, but also to promote recycling. The system is very complicated and has lots of players, so a more detailed discussion, perhaps involving consultants, would help Metro devise a policy that encourages recycling in an environment where neither sticks nor carrots nor prices have seemed to work.

Mr. Petersen agreed. He said when the idea of lifting the 50,000-ton cap at existing MRFs should be investigated, as well as that of building new transfer stations. The effect those actions on recovery should be studied.

Mr. Petersen clarified one bullet point of Ms. Linson’s, that the low disposal cost have offset the effects of the fee-credit program. He said it was the low landfill costs which she referred, not to the tip fee. He said the internal economics of the vertically integrated companies makes it hard to provide enough economic incentive to compete with low landfill costs.

Councilor McLain asked how recovery could be encouraged in the face of the reconfiguration of the waste-transfer system. She said the facilities had originally expressed their support for recovery, but the report indicates they have not done that. She suggested a one-on-one conversation with the vendor who had approached this as a give-away.

Mr. Petersen said they had had discussions with WMI, who explained that the low recovery rates were due to the 50,000-ton cap, which forced them to bring in wet waste instead of dry, recoverable loads. They said that if the cap were lifted, they could go back to high recovery rates.

Councilor McLain said that answer did not satisfy her.

Councilor Park asked what the penalty program used to look like. He said suggested that if the cap were raised, Metro would need assurances that it would work. He said some of the companies were doing well and other poorly, so perhaps a combination of the carrot and the stick would be necessary. He asked if enough penalty could be added to make recovery more economically viable.

Mr. Petersen said that regarding incentives, REM does not have enough in the system fee to offer back enough money in the form of a waiver to offset low-cost landfilling.

Councilor Park asked whether the credit to haulers as well as facilities.

Mr. Petersen said no.

Councilor Park asked what incentives existed to encourage haulers to go after more recoverables. Mr. Petersen said he was uncertain. He said the WRI facility in Wilsonville offers a tiered rate schedule--the more recoverables in the load, the lower the rate. Mr. Petersen said as far as he knew that was not done at other MRFs.

Councilor Park asked if only those haulers using WRI had an incentive. Mr. Petersen said that the more source-separated recyclables kept out of the waste stream, the lower the dump fees for all haulers. That is provides some incentive. Councilor Park asked if that was enough. Mr. Petersen said the best measure of that is the regional recycling rate over the past few years, which has stalled out.

Councilor McLain said the fact that Metro does not franchise with haulers as the cities and counties do. Her biggest concern aside form the tipping fee is commingling. She said the Portland plan sounds good, but she does not understand how commingling costs less. She does not understand how sorting recyclables at the facilities costs less than having it sorted at the curbside. She said the public has been trained to separate. She said the industry has explained to her that the efficiency relates to the cost of providing a number of containers versus the cost of central sorting equipment, but she has yet to be convinced.

Chair Washington said he did expect these issues to be resolved by October. The reason he had asked for the October date was to get at least the first report. Others might be needed later. He thought the committee needed to be updated regularly. He said the whole issue is very complicated, but the solid waste system is crucial to Metro’s support; therefore, it is extremely important to understand all the ramifications.

6.  COUNCILOR COMMUNICATIONS

Councilor Park reminded the Chair he would not be present at the next Council/Executive Informal, as he would be out of town.

Councilor McLain said there would be an opportunity to participate in a work session on the service plan. She requested permission to attend.

Chair Washington requested that Mr. Petersen provide an update from Metro’s enforcement arm. He said the committee had not had an update from Mr. Kraten for some time. He suggested one at the next REM meeting on enforcement.

There being no further business before the committee, Chair Washington adjourned the meeting at 2:28 PM.

Respectfully submitted,

Pat Emmerson

Council Assistant

ATTACHMENTS TO THE PUBLIC RECORD FOR THE MEETING OF JULY 21, 1999

The following have been included as part of the official public record.