Eight North Hills municipalities facing the end of their group garbage contract are having to figure out how they’re going to keep getting their residents’ trash taken away.
While some are making changes now while others will have to do it next year, a regional group is leading broader talks about what the future of garbage hauling across Allegheny County could look like.
The eight communities — Bradford Woods, Etna, Hampton, Indiana Township, Millvale, O’Hara, Ross and Sharpsburg — had all been under the contract with Waste Management through the North Hills Council of Governments that began in 2023 and ends this year.
The council, commonly known as a COG, won’t be doing another contract.
A representative of the North Hills COG did not respond to TribLive’s requests for comment.
Hampton Manager Ryan Jeroski said his understanding of why the COG won’t be doing another group contract is because too many of the municipalities, his included, were not going to be participating.
“The needs of the communities are just so different that the COG-wide bidding doesn’t work anymore,” he said. “Each community is so different in terms of what their garbage needs are — whether they’re automated or manual, whether they do yard waste collection, how they do bulk waste collection. That model of bidding doesn’t work anymore, and you ultimately end up paying more money through a COG bid than if the individual municipality went out.”
While the contract with Waste Management ends this year, the municipalities all have the option of extending it for 2027 with no increase in cost. Bradford Woods, Etna and Millvale have opted to do that.
Indiana Township and O’Hara had not decided.
Hampton, Ross and Sharpsburg have chosen to get new bids for 2027.
While Ross and Sharpsburg were still working on getting bids, Hampton Council has awarded a contract to Vogel Disposal, which beat offers from Waste Management and County Hauling.
Hampton residents will see a roughly 23% reduction in their monthly cost, decreasing from the current $39.51 to $30.35.
“When we opened the bids, my initial thought was, ‘Did I miss something?’ ” Jeroski said. “That was a lot lower than I expected.”
In fact, the monthly charge Hampton residents will pay with Vogel will stay below the current charge with Waste Management through the life of the five-year deal, rising to $34.80 in the final year.
With an option to extend the contract another five years, it would not be until 2032 that Hampton residents would pay more for garbage than they are now, Jeroski said.
Ross had begun seeking bids but withdrew its request because of changes to the specifications.
“The original specifications did not include a separate yard waste collection component,” township Manager Jessica Crawshaw said. “However, in response to numerous resident concerns, we will be revising the specifications to incorporate yard waste collection services.”
Crawshaw said she expects Ross to open bids in late May or early June.
Ross will not be using the additional year with Waste Management, Crawshaw said.
“Ross Township has elected to proceed with issuing its own bid in order to secure a contract tailored specifically to the township’s needs and priorities,” she said.
Sharpsburg was preparing bid specifications, Manager Christine DeRunk said.
“We will know more once the proposals come back,” she said. “I don’t have a date for that yet since the specs are still being finalized.”
An Alcosan for garbage?
The communities extending their service with Waste Management for 2027 have only delayed seeking bids for a year, as they will need to do so for service beginning in 2028.
The Congress of Neighboring Communities, which goes by CONNECT, has been working on coming up with a solution. The nonprofit organization is made up of Allegheny County, Pittsburgh and about 45 municipalities.
Beyond the eight affected by the end of the North Hills COG contract, its goal is to bring municipal officials together to build momentum around an alternative to individual municipalities seeking waste-hauling bids on their own, said Andrew Flynn, a Mt. Lebanon commissioner and president of the CONNECT board.
“There’s no negotiating capacity for one tiny municipality,” he said.
While Etna plans to seek bids for garbage service in 2028, borough Manager Mary Ellen Ramage said they are working with CONNECT “as they are attempting to establish a waste authority that would encompass multi-communities with multiple bids.”
Millvale Council President James Machajewski said he would prefer getting a new contract as part of a group because it would have better pricing.
“If we have to do it individually, we’ll be ready for that,” he said.
Flynn said they have been discussing with municipalities what future service models could look like. While what that could be is for now hard to say, an analogy he uses is Alcosan.
Alcosan, the Allegheny County Sanitary Authority, was formed in 1946 to address severe pollution in Pittsburgh’s rivers. It became fully operational in 1959, serving 83 communities and now managing a $2 billion clean water plan to update infrastructure by 2036.
“Do we need to create a regional waste authority? Maybe. That might be the approach,” Flynn said. “Everybody has to say yes. There has to be sufficient interest to go down this path.”
Staff writer Michael DiVittorio and contributing writer Natalie Beneviat contributed to this report.