Town of Oyster Bay Weighing Big Garbage Contract

A town-appointed panel is recommending approve a 5-10 year contract with a waste hauler, estimated to be $100 million over 10 years, to truck the town's garbage to a dump in the Syracuse area.

The Town Board listened to the presentation from the panel's members at a public hearing held during Tuesday's board meeting. Final action on the plan isn't expected for a month.

The engineers and consultants on the panel favored a proposal by Winters Bros., a Long-Island waste management company and the town's current long distance waste hauler. The company's proposal was not the lowest bid offered by six haulers competing for the contract.

Hal Mayer, the town's environmental consultant, explained that state law does not require the town to accept the bid of the lowest bidder under certain circumstances, including certain environmental issues.

"The process is not only about money, but allows for other considerations," said Supervisor John Venditto.

Mayer said price can't be the only consideration when discussing an issue as costly and complicated as garbage, one that affects every town resident in one way or another.

The Town of Oyster Bay's garbage is picked up and hauled by town crews to its transfer station in Old Bethpage. From there, the contractor hauls it nearly 400 miles to the Seneca Meadows Landfill, near Syracuse. The volume of town garbage has remained steady in recent years and is considerably less than what was shipped in Long Island's recent past, town officials said.

The Winters contract was ranked first by the panel for several reasons, Mayer said. The company has the current contract with the town and is well known to to town officials. It's parent company owns the landfill upstate, and Winters could guarantee the "chain of custody" of the town's garbage, Mayer said.

The new contract would run for five years and could be extended by another five, town officials said. The 10-year estimated cost of the contract is $100 million.

Winters is currently hauling the town's garbage through a 6-month contract extension that costs the town $74.80 per ton. 

Winters first got the Town contact in the spring of 2007 at a cost of $69.84 per ton. Last year, the town shipped 116,329 tons at a total cost of $8.7 million. The per-ton cost for the first five years of the proposed contract are: year 1-$70.87, year 2-$73.35, year 3-$75.91, year 4-$78.56 and year 5-$80.70, town officials said.

Joseph Rutigliano, president of Coastal Distribution, one of the bidders, objected to the recommendation during the public hearing. He said his company's bid was clearly the lowest and that cost projections by Winters are based on its assumption that its trucks will have state Department of Transportation permits allowing them to be overloaded.

Mayer countered that the town took that and other environmental concerns into consideration when making its proposal.