Talking trash: Frustrated residents, Orange County leaders vent about garbage piles
Government has two main functions — protecting the public and picking up garbage — and Orange County is failing at one of them, said Glenn Rubinstein, annoyed by lingering trash piles in his Orange County neighborhood.
“This garbage thing has just gotten out of hand,” he said. “They’re just not getting it done.”
President of the Timber Isle homeowners association in east Orange, Rubinstein emailed a blistering complaint about sanitation failings to county leaders last week, one of a flurry of similar gripes sent recently by residents with rotting garbage heaps on their curbs.
“We have rats in the debris, homeless people are hiding in it at night and now we have situations where nonresidents are simply dumping garbage in the piles on the side of the road,” Tampa Avenue resident Rick Wohleber wrote to Mayor Jerry Demings. “I recently caught someone driving by with junk in their truck and they just heaved it all out in front of a house up the street.”
Orange County residential property owners pay $250 a year for sanitation service, which include once-a-week collections of household garbage; recyclable materials; bulk items like a couch or refrigerator; and yard waste. The fee will rise to $260 next year.
Orange County Administrator Byron Brooks told county commissioners Tuesday that officials in the solid waste division have discussed the issues with waste haulers and imposed fines as allowed in contracts for failing to meet collection and removal obligations.
He called the companies’ performance “just flat out ... unacceptable.”
“There are penalties in the contracts,” Brooks said. “We’re exercising those penalties but we’d prefer to get the trash picked up.”
Between Jan. 1 and Sept. 30, the county received more than 22,000 complaints from sanitation customers about their service and levied more than $300,000 in penalties to sanitation companies, said Debbie Sponsler, Orange County Utilities spokesperson.
Sponsler was unable to provide figures for October and November, when some commissioners say complaints increased.
“I know phone calls increased. But whether or not all of those phone calls are complaints? I don’t know,” she said.
Three companies service the county: Advanced Disposal/Waste Management, FCC and Waste Pro.
Sponsler said the companies have had staffing issues, a problem not just in Central Florida but nationwide.
She said those problems have led to delays that were made worse by hurricanes Ian and Nicole, which packed high enough winds to topple garbage trucks. The landfill closed and pick ups were halted for two days as a precaution. Collection schedules were juggled.
“We just had so many issues,” Sponsler said. “You had winds, you had flooding. You just had a lot of stuff going on.”
Some complaints mistakenly lump residential sanitation service with hurricane-debris removal.
Sponsler said the county’s residential waste-haulers aren’t expected to pick up hurricane debris.
The county pays debris contractors separately to remove storm garbage. FEMA reimburses local governments for those costs.
The hurricane-debris crews are scheduled to wrap up their work Friday.
More than 312,000 cubic yards of hurricane debris has been collected, said Darrell Moody, Public Works’ spokesperson. But some piles sat for months, prompting a few residents to illuminate them like holiday decorations.
“Anybody who’s been through a hurricane before just understands that it takes time,” Moody said.
Moody said any resident who still has curbside hurricane debris should call 311, the county’s information hotline. He said county officials will meet Monday with hurricane-debris contractors to determine if any streets need “revisited.”
The board’s trash discussion Tuesday was spurred by Philip Spicer, whose street was lined with garbage for more than a month.
“For six weeks, we had the following sitting on the side of our street: two mattresses, a headboard, some unknown products, barrels and barrels of cuttings from the trees or bushes,” said Spicer, an Apopka-area resident. “The most onerous of all was a dirty toilet that somebody had taken out of their house. ... Imagine celebrating your Thanksgiving, inviting people [who have] to drive by this.”
The pile was picked up Monday, and Spicer thanked District 2 Commissioner Christine Moore for interceding.
“It’s not funny but they didn’t pick my trash up last weekend either,” she said. “They missed half my street. Why?”
Like Moore, whose district includes northwest Orange, District 3 Commissioner Mayra Uribe said she was skipped, too.
“I can’t keep being quiet. I have people who can’t get their regular trash collected on a timely basis,” she said, referring to residents of the south-central district, which includes the neighborhoods of Azalea Park, Holden Heights, Pine Castle and Rio Pinar.
Uribe said a sanitation truck drove down her street and turned around without picking up the trash.
In an email to commissioners last week, David Gregory, manager of the solid waste division, addressed the “persistent delays.”
He said his team continues to monitor haulers’ performance and uses customer service reps to field customer concerns.
“We are aware of particular problems in certain areas,” he wrote, specifying problems, haulers and suggested solutions.
When haulers are behind schedule, they start the next day collecting “yesterday’s waste,” Gregory said in his email. “I assure you that our team is working hard to address customer complaints and striving to bring all of the haulers up to the standards our customers deserve.”
