NEW ORLEANS — New Orleans residents living outside the French Quarter and Central Business District are stuck with once-a-week trash pickup, at least for now.
Tuesday, a spokesman for Mayor LaToya Cantrell said there is no date yet as to when customers can expect twice-a-week service to resume.
Overstuffed trash cans, trash bags and other household garbage piled up in front of people’s homes and in back allies have become a sign of the times in New Orleans.
The city shifted to once-a-week trash pickup in early October after the two primary solid waste contractors -- Metro Service Group and Richard’s Disposal fell behind on their routes.
“The reason we moved from twice-a-week to once-a-week is because twice-a-week wasn’t working,” New Orleans Communications Director Beau Tidwell said. “It wasn’t happening. It wasn’t reliable. It just wasn’t working.”
The city is now reaching out to industry experts for ideas on how to get the best sanitation services for residents.
That information will be used to hopefully improve the collection process as the city rebids the Service Area 2 contract currently held by Metro.
Sidney Torres owns IV Waste one of the city’s emergency waste contractors brought on in an effort to catch up on garbage removal.
He expects to bid on the Service Area 2 contract.
Torres says if the city returns to twice-a-week pick up, look for higher sanitation fees.
“There’s no way you can pick it up under the current conditions for the same pricing,” Torres said. “It’s just not possible in the way that it is right now. Just the materials, and equipment and labor, everything has gone up.”
Residential waste deposited in commercial dumpsters has dramatically increased since the city went to once-a-week collection, Torres added.
“We’ve had customers pull their camera footage to see that there’s residents with cars, pulling up, taking it out of the trunk and putting it in dumpsters. They just want to dispose of it, not that it’s right, but they want to get it off the street.”
The city sanitation fee was suspended for November.
Tidwell says it will return to $24 a month in December.
That means people will continue to pay the twice-a-week cost for once-a-week service.
“The number is not what really in play here,” Tidwell said. “The service is. The pickups are happening. They are happening in a more reliable way than they were happening three months ago.”
According to the city, recycling will restart in the areas serviced by Richard’s Disposal by the end of the year. It won’t resume in areas serviced by Metro until a new contract is bid in the first quarter of next year.