Fall River's trash bill spikes to $13.9M as city seeks new contract
Fall River’s trash bill spikes to $13.9M as city seeks new contract
FALL RIVER — The city may have learned a few lessons from last year when it comes to the balancing act of keeping trash collection routine for its nearly 100,000 residents, and keeping waste hauling companies hitched.
Fall River is ready to act on a two-year contract plus a one-year built-in extension option, with Capitol Waste Services, Inc. The East Boston-based waste hauler would be responsible for collecting the city’s solid waste and disposing of it, in addition to handling curbside collection of single-stream recycling.
The cost of the contract is not included in materials provided to City Council members as of the April 28 meeting, where the Council voted to refer the contract proposal to the City Council Committee on Finance. According to earlier reports, the trash collection makes up 2.9% of the city’s Fiscal 2027 budget of $479 million.
That brings the grand total to somewhere in the ballpark of $13,891,000 that Fall River is scheduled to pay for waste collection expenses.
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Who were the bidders to pick up Fall River’s trash?
Fall River received two bids in finding a waste hauler: Capitol Waste Services beat out EL Harvey and was chose by a selection committee comprised of the Board of Health’s Stephen Gagliardi, interim City Administrator Ann O’Neill Souza, City Council Vice President Michelle Dionne, Director of City Operations Al Oliveira, and Trevor Coelho, the city’s purchasing agent.
New Bedford-based EL Harvey scored lower on a rubric the committee used to determine the best fit for the four bundles services that can help keep Fall River clean.
Furthermore, Capitol Waste Services stood out in terms of their knowledge of Fall River, staffing, management plan, and communications, and approach to quality assurance when meeting customer expectation.
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With Capitol coming onboard, the city appears to be distancing itself from a decade-long contract with EZ Disposal that is set to expire in June.
This time last year, it was noted by councilors a contract amendment signed in October 2024 resulted in collection costs of so far $173,000 per month, spilling into fiscal 2026 to begin next month.
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EZ Disposal handles curbside collection of solid waste and recycling; Republic Services previously disposed of the solid waste; EL Harvey is the third company that has handled the disposal of recyclables.
EZ Disposal’s 10-year contract had built in “liquidation damage” amounts — essentially, fines — that are incurred if one party terminates the contract prematurely before the 10-year term. With nine years down, Fall River was beginning the final year of that contract in June 2025.
Regular trash pick-ups by EZ Disposal were tied into Fall River’s Department of Community Maintenance, and if they threaten to abandon their contract with the city, explained then-DCM Director Oliveira to the June 10 City Council Committee on Finance meeting, a “public safety emergency” could — and almost did — happen.
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Despite the city’s attempts to tamp down costs associated with trash collection expenses, the cost of each haul continues to rise, in part because of a global and national push to reduce pollution.
January 2018, China banned 24 types of imported solid waste, causing a significant impact on the global waste trade.
According to USA Today reports from June 2018, nearly 4,000 shipping containers full of plastic recyclables a day had been shipped from the U.S. to Chinese recycling plants. The country moved forward on a more aggressive antipollution push.
In July 2024, the city’s trash bill rang up at around $9 million. With the latest data for expenses built into the city budget, Fall River is facing close to a $4.9 million increase over the past two years.
In 2023, Dartmouth’s Crapo Hill Landfill had put out a solicitation for solid waste disposal.
It was reported that the city negotiated a temporary contract of $116 a ton, that held during the end of fiscal 2025, and has been renewed for 2026, filling in the gap in contracts.
“Tonnage drives disposal,” the city’s special counsel Matthew Thomas said at the June 2025 Council meeting. “We had assumed — wrongfully so, apparently — that when we cut commercial curbside collection, the tonnage would drop. It hasn’t.”
Single-stream recycling has gotten flagged as “not the best way to go,” by Thomas at the same time.
“Most people do not want to recycle,” City Council President Joseph Camara said around that time, despite efforts by the DCM to improve its recycling education.