Long-running issues with trash collection in the outlying areas of Lexington County are leading to big changes in how the county deals with residents’ waste.
On Tuesday, Lexington County Council voted to create a special tax district covering all of the unincorporated areas of the county outside its cities and towns, in order to provide for waste collection for all county residents.
The motion still needs final approval, and pricing has not been set.
It’s an issue that has drawn opposition from rural residents who don’t want to pay for curbside trash collection, even as county officials are left to deal with complaints about various private trash haulers in different parts of the county.
“A lot of citizens have reached out about pick-up issues with a current vendor,” Lexington County Administrator Lynn Sturkie told a council committee on Sept. 17.
Solid Waste Director Lee McIntyre said his department received 280 complaints in August alone.
“The majority fall into ‘they’re not picking up on the same day,’ ‘it’s never the same day every week,’ and the biggest is that they’re not picking up yard waste,” McIntyre told council members. “They’ll go three to six weeks between yard waste pick up … and if one resident calls for yard trash, they will pick up the one who complained, and go past waste that’s supposed to be picked up, but they don’t until they get an actual call on it.”
The proposal would create a publicly funded waste collection program for all county residents.
Members of the committee said waste collection complaints are not a new issue for constituents to contact them about. Councilman Darrell Hudson joked that complaints to McIntyre’s office have gone up because “I got tired of taking trash complaints so I gave them your number.”
McIntyre said many of the issues have resulted from a lack of available trucks, and the vendor has started running some routes on rental trucks.
Lexington County last considered changing the way trash is handled in 2021, when council members considered rolling out a countywide program to combat a crush of residents in the growing county from overwhelming its 11 collection sites. At the time, the solid waste department estimated that a countywide program would cost each household about $258 a year.
County staff looked at how other counties handle their waste, and found three other South Carolina counties have countywide trash collection: next-door neighbor Richland County and much smaller Marion and Marlboro counties. The two smaller counties collect household waste only with an annual charge of $228 and $235, respectively. Richland County collects household waste, yard debris and biweekly recycling for $368, McIntyre said Tuesday, although he wasn’t able to say how many residents in the unincorporated parts of Richland were served by the program.
Council members wondered whether a new charge in the hundreds of dollars would be appealing enough for the estimated half of county residents who do not currently sign up for curbside collection. Councilwoman Charli Wessinger said it would be $368 more than those residents are paying now, but Chairwoman Beth Carrigg said that would depend on the cost of near-weekly driving to the nearest collection site.
“Not everybody can burn it in their back of their lot,” Carrigg said.
The solid waste department previously estimated the county could save at least $2.5 million annually if curbside collection meant the county could cut back operations at its collection sites.
At the Sept. 17 committee hearing, Carrigg said she’d received complaints about a vendor in the Whitehall neighborhood when a bag of trash fell out the back of a truck and left injection needles spread over the road, she said.
Carrigg said the county needs a comprehensive solution to its trash woes. “It can’t be piecemeal pickup, because it’ll be three houses on one street and one house on the next,” she said. “And a rental owner may not subscribe, but the renter will put trash out and it just sits.”
In the end, council gave initial approval to the countywide program by title only, meaning the details — including pricing — will still need to be worked out. Councilman Todd Cullum said they were advancing the proposal so the council could schedule a hearing so the public could sound off on the idea.
“We haven’t heard from them in a public setting,” he said.
The motion passed 5-2, with Carrigg, Cullum, Hudson, Glen Conwell and Bimbo Jones voting in favor. Wessinger and Larry Brigham voted against.
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