Higher trash fees in New Orleans? City eyes hike, but some residents pan service.

A day after Mayor Helena Moreno cautioned that sanitation costs would eat into basic city services without new revenue, administration officials on Tuesday made their case for why residents should pay more for weekly trash pickups.

A handful of residents also gave the City Council members an earful on what they described as lackluster trash service, and panned the city’s separate decision not to expand its recycling program by pursuing a federal grant. 

Unchanged since 2011, the current sanitation fee runs residents $24 a month for once-per-week, curbside trash and recycling collection. But as the city faces a multi-million dollar budget deficit amid rising sanitation costs, Moreno’s administration is pushing for a fee hike to bridge the gap.

New Orleans’ Sanitation Department has fielded its own budget deficit for years, one that’s increased each year as contracts undergo adjustments, Department Director Matt Torri told the City Council’s Public Works committee Tuesday.

Costs are now around $62 million a year, but the current service fee only covers a fraction of that — $38 million— last year. That leaves about a $24 million gap the city has had to cover in recent years by reallocating money through the general fund, which takes away from other city services, officials say.

Torri told the council Tuesday that the fee hike would not result in a return to twice-weekly trash pickups – a change residents have called for, after twice-weekly collections were removed in 2021 in what was billed as a temporary change. 

“That would mean we’d have to double the number of trucks, people, drivers that are out on the streets providing that service,” Torri said.

Torri did not speak on the council’s move to surrender a $4 million recycling grant, but he said that the city’s opt-in curbside recycling program residents are already paying for is available to all 165,000 service locations, but less than half have signed up.  

That was not enough for resident Annie Moran and others who showed up to the council’s Public Works committee to urge the city to do more to boost its recycling rate. 

“We are city plagued by garbage,” Moran said. ”What disturbs me more than the eyesore of the piles of litter under the Claiborne bridge and plastic films that blow into my yard almost daily is knowing that there are tons and tons more of it sitting in landfills that could have been reused or recycled.”

The city’s Sanitation Department oversees a crew of contractors who provide once-weekly trash pickup to residents citywide, and once-weekly curbside recycling to residents who request it. Paying the $24 fee will get residents both services, but the city spends more on the program than it takes in. 

Before Hurricane Ida, sanitation crews worked to provide twice-weekly trash pickup, at the same cost residents are paying now. But after a Hurricane Ida-related trash crisis in 2021 saw heaps of rotting garbage spilling out into the streets for weeks, the city cut pickups to once per week. 

Trash haulers after the crisis issued higher pay and committed to more safety protections for workers, as staffing troubles caused by working conditions often led to delays in pickups, the city’s haulers said. 

Since then, Torri said the trash contractors have introduced new vehicles with tracking software and cameras that have helped cut down on missed collections — complaints for which averaged 1,400 a month at their peak in 2022, Torri said. Today, those numbers have dropped to about a couple hundred a month. 

The companies have also expanded their traditional two-hopper garbage trucks to automated side-load trucks and trucks that haul larger items like furniture, mattresses and electronic waste.

Torri said adding a second pickup trash day would run the city another million dollars each month or about $12 million a year and provide a relatively low return in value. Contractors citywide would need to work six days a week, instead of five, he said. 

And twice-weekly pickups on a temporary basis is also unlikely, as it would be “near impossible” for contractors to double staff for a short period of time, Torri said in response to a question from Councilmember Lesli Harris about doing so in the summer months when seafood consumption increases.

As for recycling, the $3.9 million Environmental Protection Agency grant would have allowed the city to deliver blue recycling carts to all residents’ homes, without the need for a request. An additional $1.4 million grant from a nonprofit would have covered the cost of public education about the recycling program. 

Council President JP Morrell has said the city may have been left on the hook for expenses related to the new bins and that the changes could result in more trash if residents use the bins as extra trash cans. But residents on Tuesday accused officials of sweeping a needed service under the rug.

“We have the funds to provide those carts. But you guys, all of you, are complicit in withholding federal funding to provide universal access for people,” said resident Chris Lang, a former staffer who was fired from the city’s Office of Resilience and Sustainability in January. 

At a news conference Monday, Mayor Helena Moreno said the City Council will have to determine what the sanitation fee increase would be, but if it moves forward, it could cover additional services like assembling a strike force to tackle illegal tire dumping.

Torrie said while his department, in conjunction with local public safety agencies, made progress last year in tackling the issue, the work is time-consuming and takes away from more critical needs.