The El Granada-based Seacoast Disposal and its Pacifica partner company, Coastside Scavenger, entered into an agreement last year to turn over their trash contracts with Midcoast sanitary agencies as part of a larger takeover deal with Recology, a far larger company that handles waste pickup across Northern California.
The Coastside trash company was facing mounting debt of almost $850,000, which Recology paid off in its bid to become the waste hauler for the Coastside north of Half Moon Bay.
 Francisco Cordova, left, and Joey Castellanos collect green waste Thursday morning while on a run through Princeton. Their company recently changed hands. |
“The Coastside was a natural expansion for us,” he said. “This creates a good nexus for us in providing services along the coast, and we’ll have more resources by expanding from our base.”
By picking up the existing contracts with the Midcoast sanitary agencies, Recology must keep its rates the same as Seacoast Disposal for the time being. The company could raise rates when its contracts are up for renegotiation. Arsenault said rate changes for the Midcoast could be discussed in negotiations when the contracts expire.
Further to the north, Pacifica residents are already anticipating a 4 to 8 percent increase when their contract is renewed in November.
Recology expects to keep as many staff “as are qualified and required” from Seacoast Disposal, although it plans to update the garbage-pickup operation. By August, the company expects to replace the Seacoast garbage trucks with newer vehicles with automated lifts to pick up trash bins. Recology also plans to provide households with three new waste cans for general trash, recycling, and organic compost.
The company expects to bring single-stream recycling to Coastside residents, which will allow households to dump all recyclable material into a single recycling bin instead of sorting it into separate piles. Customers will still be able to drop off large unwieldy items at regular times.
Before the end of the year, customers will need to select different trash can sizes, including 20-, 32-, 48-, or 64-gallon bins. The larger the trash can, the more the customer will have to pay, Arsenault said, but he noted that price discussions with Midcoast agencies haven’t started yet.
For the most part, Midcoast sanitary boards praised the new deal with Recology.
“The fact that Recology has stepped up, assumed all the debts from our collector and agreed to the terms of our current contracts will be a good thing for our customers,” said GSD Director Ric Lohman via e-mail. “Some things will be better in the future, some will just be different.”
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