St. Paul, FCC Environmental to revamp trash hauling

Frederick Melo, Pioneer Press
Updated ·6 min read
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FCC Environmental will build a new compressed natural gas station in St. Paul to fuel its new fleet of some 30 trash hauling trucks custom-designed for the capital city’s streets and narrow alleys, the first step toward an overhaul of organized trash collection that will allow some households to eventually opt out or share carts.

The city has yet to determine final trash hauling rates for residents, which will be impacted by the county’s disposal fee, gas costs and taxes. Officials have declined to speculate on whether residents will see any cost savings.

Property owners who opt out of trash hauling will be required to show they have another means of disposal, such as a commercial dumpster at a mixed-use building. They will not be allowed to switch to another private hauler, said a spokesperson for St. Paul Public Works.

The city switched from subscription services run by private haulers to an organized system in 2018, with private companies assigned to separate zones or districts serving 128,000 one- to four-unit houses. By April 1, 2025, St. Paul will ditch that system entirely, opting instead for Houston-based FCC Environmental to service some 90 percent of the city’s street and alley routes with some 60 private employees.

St. Paul Public Works will add an additional 18 new workers in-house, including 12 drivers and six support staff, to handle the remaining 10% of all routes, which amounts to some 6,500 small properties on the hardest-to-service alleys, most of them on the city’s East Side, North End and West Side. Those municipal drivers will handle two or three routes per day before switching over to their second priority — clearing illegal dump sites.

The alleys to be overseen by the city’s Public Works team — like the location of FCC’s new compressed natural gas station — have yet to be finalized, said St. Paul Public Works Director Sean Kershaw.

Seven-year contract

On Wednesday, Kershaw joined Mayor Melvin Carter, Solid Waste and Recycling Program coordinator Sarah Haas, city council President Mitra Jalali and FCC Environmental Chief Executive Officer Dan Brazil at the city’s public works maintenance facility on Dale Street to announce that the city officially entered into a seven-year contract with the international trash hauling company for garbage, yard waste and bulky-item collection.

“We’re really excited about this,” said Carter, noting the new system was designed to address “concerns people have voiced over and over for the past several years.”

Following a request for proposals, nine were ranked in December, leading to negotiations with FCC Environmental in February. Final negotiations wrapped in April.

The company serves about 12 million Americans, with a small footprint in the Midwest that includes 150,000 households in Omaha, Neb., and operates in 12 countries, with more than 35,000 employees globally.

City to handle billing, customer service

Carter said while he was a firm proponent of organized trash collection, residents made their criticisms of particular aspects of the system well known. As a result, the city will handle billing and customer service itself, as well as the routes most likely to get skipped by private haulers due to tight turns, narrow alleyways and icy conditions.

The city convened a garbage advisory committee, which released a series of additional recommendations in November 2023, and those have been taken to heart, Carter said.

Residents who can prove they have other qualifying means of trash disposal will be allowed to opt out in 2026, and small multi-unit buildings will be able to share trash and recycling carts.

Haas said the owner of a series of small apartment buildings took her to 14 locations where each household had been mandated by the city to maintain separate trash carts, most of which sat empty. The unnecessary expense simply added to housing costs or cut into the landlord’s bottom line.

“That was really helpful to get that visual,” Haas said.

That landlord, Alisa Lein, was not at the media event on Wednesday morning but said she was hopeful the new contract will speak to her concerns.

“The idea of sharing is great. The idea of opt-out is great,” Lein said. “It will come down to the details of what ‘sharing’ means — can we have a dumpster instead of carts? Those kinds of things. The big picture is hopeful. It’s taken way too long to get here. My big push for years has been to allow reasonable exceptions to the mandates, and not require everyone to fit into the same box.”

Rear loading

St. Paul will use two-person trucks with rear loading, as opposed to grabber arms located on one side of the truck. That way, collection of each alley will occur in one sweep. Brazil said 70% of the FCC Environmental routes will be serviced by one-person trucks relying on automated side loaders, and 30% will be serviced by rear-loading, two-person trash trucks.

In St. Paul, “some of these alleys are like a T, so it’s more difficult to turn,” said Brazil, who is based in Houston but grew up in Litchfield, Minn., and previously lived in St. Paul before relocating to Texas. “Omaha is very similar. Roughly half the city is collected via alleyway. St. Paul has more alley.”

At least one major program goal from the early days of organized trash collection in St. Paul has been thrown out the window. In an effort to support smaller, family-owned haulers, the city negotiated a five-year contract with a consortium of 15 trash haulers in 2017. Rather than keep those smaller haulers in St. Paul, the arrangement provided extra incentive for large players like Waste Management to buy out routes from the smaller companies, the only way to increase market share within the city.

Today, only five haulers service residential accounts in the city, and most of them are large regional, national or international players: Aspen Waste, Gene’s Disposal Service, Highland Sanitation, Republic Services and Waste Management.

Other details

Other details include:

• FCC Environmental will invest more than $25 million for its new compressed natural gas station for overnight fueling at a yet-to-be-disclosed location within the city limits. The company’s route managers will drive fully electric pick-up trucks, and an electric box truck will handle bulky and appliance pick-up.

• Instead of two or three bulky items such as sofas and refrigerators picked up annually at no extra charge, residents will able to leave out one refrigerator-size item per month, or 12 annually, on their regular collection day without calling in advance. The exception is electronics, which will require special handling.

• Opting out and cart sharing will be rolled out gradually, phased in for property owners beginning in 2026.

• Property owners will receive quarterly bills from the city, not the hauler, after services have been rendered. The current system requires advance billing, but that will end.

• Customer service calls will be handled by city staff. Residents will call one number for garbage, yard waste, bulky pick-up, recycling collection or cart issues.

• FCC Environmental will service 48,000 larger residential properties — those with five or more units — beginning Nov. 1. St. Paul has also entered into a new five-year recycling contract with long-standing partner Eureka Recycling for one- to four-unit properties, also beginning Nov. 1.

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