Oyster Bay OKs Big Long-Term Garbage Contract

The has approved a a 5-10 year contract with a waste hauler, estimated to be $100 million over 10 years, to truck the town's garbage to a Syracuse-area landfill.

The Town Board voted 6-0 to grant the contract to Winters Bros, a Long-Island waste management company and the town's current long-distance waste hauler.

The vote took place without public discussion or debate. The contract had been the subject of a lengthy public hearing last month. 

At that hearing, a panel of engineers and consultants favored the proposal by Winters, which was not the lowest bid offered by six haulers competing for the contract. Hal Mayer, the town's environmental consultant, explained that state law does not require the town to accept the lowest bid under certain circumstances, and that price could not be the only consideration when discussing an issue as costly and complicated as garbage.

The Town of Oyster Bay's garbage is picked up and hauled by town crews to its transfer station in Old Bethpage. From there, the contractor hauls it nearly 400 miles to the Seneca Meadows Landfill, near Syracuse. The volume of town garbage has remained steady in recent years and is considerably less than what was shipped in Long Island's recent past, town officials said.

The Winters contract was ranked first by the panel for several reasons, Mayer said previously. The company has the current contract with the town and is well known to to town officials. It's parent company owns the landfill upstate, and Winters could guarantee the "chain of custody" of the town's garbage, Mayer said.

The new contract would run for five years and could be extended by another five, town officials said. The 10-year estimated cost of the contract is $100 million.

Winters is currently hauling the town's garbage through a 6-month contract extension that costs the town $74.80 per ton. 

Winters first got the Town contact in the spring of 2007 at a cost of $69.84 per ton. Last year, the town shipped 116,329 tons at a total cost of $8.7 million. The per-ton cost for the first five years of the proposed contract are: year 1-$70.87, year 2-$73.35, year 3-$75.91, year 4-$78.56 and year 5-$80.70, town officials said.

The evening meeting of the Town Board began by acknowledging local semi-finalists of thescience competition, including four students and several others from Syosset and Jericho high schools.