‘Maggots raining out of my bin’: Johnson County residents go weeks with no trash pickup
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For about a month, Rebecca Kress said she opened the front door to her Overland Park home and was punched in the face with the smell of trash piling up along her street.
The stench was so strong as weeks worth of garbage overflowed on the curb that her five children weren’t able to play outside, draw with sidewalk chalk or ride scooters as they usually would. Raccoons and other critters, she said, ripped open the trash bags, scattering tissues and debris down her street in the Oak Park neighborhood, south of 95th Street and west of U.S. 69 highway.
“I had to pick it up and try to re-bag it. And when I went to go put the bag next to the bin, you could see maggots raining out of my bin,” Kress said. “And after a while, your trash sort of liquefies. It was pretty horrible.”
Residents across Johnson County are sharing similar stories, citing weeks of missed trash pickups and a lack of communication by waste collection company Republic Services. Officials have been seeking answers and are starting to take action.
Prairie Village, which contracts with the company for citywide service, has issued $7,000 in fines for the company’s failure to haul away trash and recycling on time.
“It doesn’t seem to make a difference, unfortunately,” City Clerk Adam Geffert said, adding that along with other Prairie Village residents, his trash has been left on the curb in recent weeks. He said routes have been missed more frequently in the past few months.
City Administrator Wes Jordan said in a statement that Republic’s “contract could be in jeopardy, and they’ve made no excuses. They have come up with plans and given us some assurances that they will turn things around.”
A spokesperson for Republic Services told The Star in an email that, “We acknowledge that these areas have experienced delays and are working with our customers to remedy the situation as quickly as we can. We are committed to serving our customers and to ensuring uninterrupted service moving forward.”
The company did not detail reasons for its delays, but is at least partly attributing the issue to staffing shortages.
“Like many companies, we are experiencing staffing challenges locally. We are leveraging all available resources to return to our normal schedule as quickly as possible, including running additional routes on Saturdays.”
Some residents in Shawnee have also gone weeks without having their trash and recycling picked up, city spokesman Doug Donahoo said. City officials have reached out to the company, but he said they have not received any information. The city plans to draft a notice of city code violation.
Lenexa Community Development Director Scott McCullough said in an email to The Star that, “If improvements are not observed over a short timeframe, the City has the ability to pursue legal remedies for Lenexa City Code Violations in Municipal Court like we have done in the past.”
The Johnson County Department of Health and Environment also has been alerted to the issue, receiving reports of health concerns due to the mounting trash in some neighborhoods.
Twice, the health department has sent Republic Services notification of their violation of state and county statutes, as well as a fine. Officials, “will continue to monitor the situation and is reviewing next steps,” spokeswoman Barbara Mitchell said.
‘This is unacceptable’
It’s not the first time residents have complained about the Phoenix-based Republic Services.
“Over a year ago, I scheduled a big trash pick up. I put five big items out on the curb. It wouldn’t get picked up,” Stephen Aspleaf, who lives in Overland Park’s Oak Park neighborhood, said. “So I would haul them back into the garage, because our homeowners association bylaws don’t allow us to keep stuff out there all the time. I was dragging it back and forth for several weeks, while getting assured by Republic it was going to get picked up. It took forever.”
And it’s not just Johnson County. Across the Kansas City metro, residents have complained over the years about missed pickups and a lack of communication from the company.
On the other side of the state line in Independence, resident Christine Alonge claimed she has filed complaints with the company online 37 times in the past two years.
“That’s not even how many times they’ve missed it. That’s just when I reported it,” she said.
Alonge is now going on four weeks of having her trash stack up in her garage, attracting mice.
“The workers seem nice. I don’t think it’s the drivers. I think it’s really poor management, in my opinion,” she said. “I’ve called customer service and told them I’m paying for services that are not being rendered. And they seem to care, but that doesn’t get me anywhere. They say they’ll pick up tomorrow. Then they’re not there.”
Republic Services has been making headlines across the country for service issues, in some states becoming the subject of lawsuits over its business practices. A class action lawsuit, for example, was filed last year in San Diego after customers were billed for services not delivered during a trash-hauler labor strike.
One of the biggest waste collection companies in the country, Republic’s website says it serves 14 million customers in 47 states.
Alonge pointed out that residents across the country commiserate over their grievances with the company’s service on a Facebook group called, “Republic Services Is Trash.”
Several Johnson County residents said this summer was the worst service they’ve seen, speculating that problems have gotten worse since the COVID-19 pandemic and amid widespread labor shortages over the past couple of years.
“We’ve worked with Republic for a number of years, and in the past the service has been right on par. They’ve had the occasional hiccup. We’re the largest homes association in Overland Park, so it’s not easy,” said Jameia Haines, president of the Oak Park Homes Association and a city council candidate. “But they have struggled recently. We’ve had members who did not have trash or recycling picked up for three consecutive weeks. That is unacceptable and does not meet the terms of our contract.”
“We’ve certainly had issues with Republic since the inception of the contract, but their service really seemed to drop off last year,” Geffert, the Prairie Village city clerk, said. “Since then, we’ve tried to meet with their management team on a regular basis, after which, things tend to improve for a short time, but then we end up right back where we started.”
Health and safety concerns
Johnson County city officials and homeowners association leaders say they’ve been working on getting answers from Republic Services.
Geffert said that the company has told the city trash and recycling are missed due to “truck breakdowns and drivers reaching their maximum hours for the week. It’s essentially a domino effect: if a section of the Monday route is missed, for example, Republic will have to return to that area Tuesday morning, which then often prevents them from picking everything up that day. The cycle then repeats on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.”
He said that Republic notified officials that it would add a new truck to its fleet that services Prairie Village, and could be adding more for next year. The city’s contract runs through 2026.
“City staff reiterated the fact that their current performance was unacceptable, and if things did not change, they were at risk of losing the contract with us, which is their largest in the region,” Geffert said. “Again, I’m optimistic that we’ll see improved performance from them in the coming weeks, but we’ll continue to fine them for missed pickups, and if necessary, consider more substantial actions if needed.”
Haines said the Oak Park Homes Association met with Republic representatives at a neighborhood meeting earlier this month.
“Beyond being an inconvenience, it’s a health and safety issue,” she said of the trash piling up. “What we are looking for with Republic is accountability. We consider them a partner. We pay them for a service.”
Haines said Republic also cited staffing, management and equipment issues when meeting with homeowners.
Larger home associations like Oak Park, Haines said, are hamstrung because Republic is the only company big enough to service its 2,300 homes at the same time.
“When we contracted with them, they had certain criteria that needed to be completed, adding new trucks and all of these things. One question we had was, ‘Where are these new trucks? Are you over-extended elsewhere?’” she said. “And we are very limited because they have the capacity to take us on. So that’s why when homeowners say we need to switch companies, well, it’s just not that easy.”
The day after the Oak Park Homes Association met with Republic, Kress said she finally watched her month-worth of trash get hauled away.
“I understand that everybody is struggling to find people for these jobs. But there have to be better solutions to the problem rather than just skipping an entire neighborhood for weeks on end,” Kress said. “There are realistic solutions to this problem that they’re not offering. It’s almost like a monopoly in our area because they’re the largest trash collector company. We don’t really have other options.”
