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New Castle town councilors to talk trash tonight

John ColsonPost Independent StaffGlenwood Springs, Colorado CO

NEW CASTLE, Colorado – The Town Council here will be talking trash tonight – waste hauling kind of trash, that is.The council will be meeting with two companies – Waste Management and Mountain Roll-offs Inc. (MRI) – vying for the contract to provide trash hauling service to the town’s estimated population of 4,500 people, living mostly in an estimated 1,500 single-family households.”People seem pretty happy with MRI,” said Town Administrator Tom Baker on Monday. “But this is the time for people to come to the council and voice any complaints or concerns they might have.”According to a memo to the Town Council, MRI has a lower monthly rate for emptying a 96-gallon bin, once a week, than does Waste Management – $12.78 per month for MRI, versus $15.61 per month for Waste Management.Each company also offers different “options” for pickup of smaller trash containers, and for different frequency of pickups.In addition, according to the memo, Waste Management has a “single stream” recyclables pickup service, meaning all recyclables can be put in one bin, and Waste Management personnel do the separating of glass, plastics, aluminum and tin from paper products.For MRI, customers must separate their recyclables into two bins – paper products in one, the rest of the recyclables, known as commingled, in the other.Among a list of “other services” available from each company, Waste Management offers an annual collection of electronic equipment, in conjunction with the town’s annual clean-up, but the pickup is charged to the individual customers rather than included in the town’s service.Baker said the council will hear a presentation from each company, and will then move to an interview of each company’s representative so the council can ask questions about any issues not covered in the presentation.”I expect the council probably will make a decision that night,” Baker predicted on Monday.In other action, the council will consider sending a letter to the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) in support of the recently released Record of Decision for oil shale and tar sands development on public lands in Colorado, Wyoming and Utah.The ROD calls for roughly 830,000 acres of public lands to be opened for “research, development and documentation” (RD&D) of different technologies used by different companies. That is a significant reduction from the 2 million acres of public lands opened for RD&D leases by an earlier ROD issued under former President George Bush.jcolson@postindependent.com


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