Answers were scarce Thursday for city councilors who demanded to know why they were left in the dark on the city's practice of hauling residential yard waste to its trash incinerator.
"Who at the city is accountable for this having been, for lack of a better word, a secret, for the last six months?" Councilor G.T. Bynum said. "Anybody want to answer that? Somebody must've known."
The Tulsa World reported Tuesday that yard waste picked up at residents' curbs had not been mulched at the city's green waste plant since at least January because equipment there could not remove the plastic bags in which residents are asked to place the material.
The city, meanwhile, has continued requiring residents to affix those bags with a 50-cent "green waste" sticker and charges every trash customer a $1.09 monthly green waste fee.
Councilors and Mayor Dewey Bartlett said the newspaper's story was the first they had heard of the situation. Bartlett said it prompted him to announce that he would ask the city's trash board to shut down its curbside green waste program in favor of allowing regular contracted trash crews to haul away green waste.
He told councilors during a special green waste discussion Thursday that he could not explain why city officials were not told.
"I don't know," he said. "I don't have an answer."
Councilors have been debating with representatives of the trash board since February over a proposed ordinance to define the rules and procedures of the city's new curbside trash, recycling and green waste systems, which began Oct. 1.
The trash board representatives repeatedly told councilors that residents should be discouraged from placing yard waste in their trash carts because that material needed to go to the green waste site rather than the trash incinerator, like other garbage.
Trash officials have required residents to use clear bags so that crews can verify that the material is yard waste.
"I'm still having a hard time trying to understand why we've been here at this table arguing about green waste when somebody knew that the chipper wasn't working," Councilor Karen Gilbert said.
"Do you see how it makes us look?"
Councilor Jeannie Cue complained that the revelation "makes it look like we're hiding things from the citizens," and Bynum added that it may have put the city at risk for lawsuits.
Randy Sullivan, the recently appointed chairman of the trash board, said city staff members only told him of the situation in the last few weeks and that he has since called a special trash board meeting to discuss the green waste program's revenue and operational problems.
That meeting, set for Tuesday, is intended to allow the trash board to brainstorm on how to improve the program.
"I think that's pretty quick action from the (trash) board," Sullivan told the council. "That's all I can say is: 'Why?' I can't answer that. I didn't know."
He added, however, that he would oppose reimbursing residents for the green waste stickers because "in my opinion, we're providing the citizens of Tulsa a great value to remove that from your front yard, and it's going to be gone."
Trash service spokeswoman Liz Hunt said after the meeting that city staff who knew of the situation believed that "the operational issue with the de-bagging equipment didn't impact the customer experience."
Bartlett said after the meeting, "I haven't had any inkling at all of somebody purposely trying to mislead anybody."
Instead, he said, city staff members likely considered sending yard waste to the trash incinerator a temporary fix that didn't require notifying anyone.
The trash board, formally known as the Tulsa Authority for the Recovery of Energy, contracts for curbside trash and recycling pickup with independent hauler NeWSolutions but uses city crews to pick up yard waste.
Although reputable companies originally told the city that a "trommel screen" could remove the bags, the city's Vermeer brand screen did not do so efficiently, green waste operators said this week.
The screen is on demo to the city and can be returned without charge, but crews are working with the manufacturer to find a solution, Hunt said.
Under Bartlett's proposal, yard waste that cannot fit in trash carts could go in any plastic bag with an orange "extra refuse" sticker, like other forms of excess trash, he suggested.
Sullivan said the proposal - or any other fix - likely would take weeks or months of tweaking NeWSolutions' contract and may even mean soliciting new bids for green waste pickup.
Bartlett downplayed earlier statements that he would propose closing the city-owned green waste facility at 10401 E. 56th St. North, which still mulches yard waste left there directly by residents.
He said the site would only close if Covanta Energy, which operates the city's trash incinerator, agrees to his request that it provide the same service.
Zack Stoycoff 918-581-8486
zack.stoycoff@tulsaworld.com
Original Print Headline: Green waste 'secret' angers city councilors
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A cause of the fire is under investigation.
