NEW ORLEANS — The city of New Orleans and Metro Service Group continued to send salvos back and forth Wednesday in a battle over trash collection services for about half of the city's homes and businesses.
The city alleges that Metro Service Group is not handling its share of the trash collection contract and that taxpayers are footing the bill to have others do so while Metro alleges city failures are causing problems for the company attempting to do its job in the wake of natural disasters in the COVID pandemic and Hurricane Ida.
City of New Orleans Director of Sanitation Matt Torri listed what he said were city payments made to pick up the slack in Metro's collections effort and asked that the company either start handling collections per its contract or move aside so the city can move on to others.
Metro, meanwhile, contends that the city merely had to activate an emergency contract provision to help it meet its collections obligations and that the city should be paying for approximately 5,000 homes the company says it has been collecting trash from but not being paid money for doing so.
Since filing for bankruptcy on Oct. 6, Torri says Metro has taken no steps to keep up with their weekly trash collection and it is costing the city money.
“Over the past year, the city, the department of sanitation, precariously held Metro’s service area together, providing Metro full payment of their monthly invoice of $900,000 despite the fact, that Metro is only providing 20 percent of the services for their contract,” Torri said.
He also says the city has paid over $3.5 million over the past year for Metro to utilize the city’s emergency transfer facility on Chef Menteur Highway which he says the city is not obligated to do.
Virginia Miller, a spokesperson for Metro, said that: "The City has been saying that they paid $6M to “assist” Metro. That is false. Metro has never sought financial assistance.
Torri contends the city paid over $2 million for IV Waste to provide emergency services to pick up once-a-week service that Metro was unable to do over the past year.
“Enough is enough, the city of New Orleans wants Metro to either immediately step forward and begin to provide the services that they are being paid for in their contract, or to step aside and allow the city to move forward with the contracts that we have been diligently working towards for November seventh,” Torri says.
Metro filed for bankruptcy protection, claiming their contract doesn’t accurately reflect the number of homes they service, and that the city hasn't paid them for the extra tonnage picked up during the pandemic.
Metro services most of the city north of I-10, from the Jefferson Parish line through New Orleans East.
The city rebid Metro’s contract when the company was unable to consistently collect trash on time.
Metro’s bankruptcy filing automatically forbids the city from terminating the company's contract, at least for now.
Last Thursday, the city council budget committee pressed pause on funding the new trash contacts.
Waste Pro and IV Waste were expected to take over for Metro on Nov. 7.