KENNER, La. — There are hundreds of Ramelli Waste trash cans, some filled with trash, stacked up within the City of Kenner's fuel depot. The city, along with fed-up residents, have been rounding up the cans in trailers and trucks and stashing them there, just to keep the trash from rotting on city streets.
The cans are everywhere, including in front of the home of Kenner Mayor Ben Zahn.
"If Ramelli wants to pick up his own cans, he's free to do so," Kenner Mayor Ben Zahn said. "We've heard that he's going to do it. We've heard that for a while."
On May 1, Ramelli Waste was ousted as the city's trash pickup provider, in the middle of a 10-year contract. For reasons the city won't explain because of pending litigation, it chose to enter into a contract with Sidney Torres's venture, IV Waste.
The problems with former provider Ramelli Waste, the city says, started almost immediately.
Ramelli filed suit against the city for breaching the contract.
Then, an Orleans Parish judge ruled that IV Waste could not touch, empty, or remove any of Ramelli's trash cans.
All of this frustrated Torres, who says industry standard is to remove the former provider's trash cans. He expected a smooth transition.
"He's not affecting me; he's affecting the people of Kenner," Torres said. "I mean, that's who it's really impacting by leaving garbage in his cans when he should be picking his cans up and getting them off the street."
As Mother's Day crawfish boil trash was left rotting in the sun, the city fined Ramelli Waste, $11 million, or $500 per household, for refusing to pick up its cans.
Adding to the confusion, while every household was intended to be using new, IV Waste cans by May 1st, a COVID-19-related factory shutdown delayed delivery by two weeks.
Stuck in the middle of the turmoil over trash are residents like Al Moncada.
"It's a trash company, so how can you mess that up? I don't know how," said Moncada.
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He said he didn't notice any major issues with Ramelli Waste. But there has been confusion over which cans to use in the last few weeks, especially for older residents or those who don't watch television.
He's also offered to drop of the Ramelli can just to get it off of his property.
"A lot of people complain about — now, I've got to empty out the trash and all that. So, it's been a nightmare, I guess, for some people," he said.
The city has now resorted to collecting all of Ramelli's now-defunct trash cans, an estimated 90 percent of which are filled with rotting trash.
Ramelli said to Eyewitness News that is it only picking up its empty cans, which is about 10 percent.
"So, I took matters into my own hands," Mayor Zahn said. "We hired contractors. We have city workers on the street again (Wednesday), picking up the Ramelli cans with garbage or just the Ramelli cans empty," said Mayor Zahn.
While Bob Ramelli declined an interview, his company wrote in a statement:
"Mayor Ben Zahn is desperate to deflect from his mistakes and deceptions that have made such a mess. The City of Kenner's failure to abide by the terms of Ramelli's contract and its instruction to Kenner residents that IV Waste was to use Ramelli cans is the reason that residents are dealing with disrupted trash collection. Ramelli was told on May 1 to cease collection of municipal solid waste and recycling in Kenner and we have complied with that stop-work order. Mayor Zahn could save us a lot of headache by being honest about how much the citizens will be paying IV Waste for their garbage collection services."
While the city's contract issue will play out in a courtroom, the city hopes to have most of the Ramelli trash cans off the street by the weekend.
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