Board of Health Member Nair Calls for Progress on Waste Hauler Reform

This meeting was held over Zoom and was recorded.

At the May 1 Board of Health meeting (at 49 minutes), board member Premila Nair requested an update on the board’s requests to the Town Council and Town Manager Paul Bockelman to move the town’s waste hauler proposal forward, referring to the long period of time the proposal has been sitting with a council committee. 

The Board of Health first took up the topic of waste reform in October of 2021, when Zero Waste Amherst (ZWA) presented a proposal  to change the system of waste pickup in Amherst to one governed by a town contract, gained through a competitive bidding process. ZWA proposed that such a contract, including  both a pay-as-you-throw fee structure and curbside compost pick up, would significantly reduce Amherst trash going to landfills and incinerators. 

In May of 2023, the Board of Health sent a letter (see below) to the council and manager urging action on the proposal and outlining its history to date. Nine months had already passed since August of 2022, when a town bylaw was proposed by council sponsors Shalini Bahl-Milne, Ellisha Walker, Jennifer Taub, and Andy Steinberg, with ZWA as a community sponsor. The proposed bylaw was referred to a council standing committee, the Town Services and Outreach committee, where it still languishes.

May 13, 2023

Dear Town Council Members,

At our May 12  Board of Health meeting, members of the board unanimously voted to urge the Town Council to act on adopting the proposal to transition Amherst’s waste hauler system to a town-contracted pay-as-you-throw fee structure including curbside compost pick up by early summer in order to have this implemented by January 2024.

The Board of Health began exploring this during the summer of 2021 and passed a motion at our November 18, 2021 meeting to create a working group to review the existing Regulations for Refuse Collection and Mandatory Recycling (last revised June 2014) and “establish elements of a pilot program to be provided directly by the town or through a town contract with one or more haulers, that would include curbside trash, recycling and compostable materials pick up in a basic service, a pay-as-you-throw fee structure and local compostable materials processing and reuse.”  The motion included membership of the working group and a timeline with a start date of January 2023 for the pilot program.  The town manager responded that the town at that point in time lacked the staffing capacity to form the working group.

At the January 2022 Board of Health meeting, the following motion was passed unanimously: “ The Board of Health supports the Zero Waste Amherst’s proposal for a pilot project to include curbside trash, recycling and compostable materials pick up in basic service, and is asking for input from the Town Council and the Town Manager for action on the Zero Waste Amherst’s proposal to move the proposal forward.”

At the June 9, 2022 Board of Health meeting the members requested an update from the Town Council on the pilot project proposal and sent a letter to the Town Council requesting that the proposal be put on the council’s agenda.

We are now urging the Town Council to act on adopting the proposal on town contracted residential refuse, recycling and compostable materials collection included in basic service.

Thank you for your action on this proposal.  The proposal begins to address climate change related issues, reduce our waste and lower refuse collection costs for town residents.

Sincerely,

Nancy J Gilbert 

Chair, Amherst Board of Health

The Board of Health has jurisdiction over the town’s waste hauler regulations and, as a state mandated board, it has the ability to act on its own. 

At some point,  TSO unanimously recommended that the council fund a consultant to help write a Request for Proposals (RFP) to local haulers in order to clarify costs and other details to implement the proposal, the Town Council voted unanimously in November 2024 to move ahead with getting this assistance..

At the recent meeting, a ZWA representative said the concepts in the proposal have wide support townwide, including from:

• Amherst Board of Health
• Amherst Energy and Climate Action Committee
• Amherst League of Women Voters
• Amherst Common Share Food Coop
• Climate Action Now Western MA
• Mothers Out Front, Amherst
• UMass Student Farming Enterprise
• Sunrise Amherst
• Hitchcock Center for the Environment
• Progressive Coalition of Amherst
• Grow Food Amherst
• UUA Green Sanctuary Committee
• Zero Waste Central Valley
• Amherst Bilingual Studio
• Sierra Club, MA Chapter
• Community Action Works (Formerly Toxics Action Center)  

The ZWA representative asserted that such a proposal would reduce the town’s trash burden dramatically since implementation of both pay-as-you-throw system and compost diversion could reduce it by as much as 40%. The representative also said that as a newly designated Climate Leader Community, the town should be a leader in waste reduction. 

See more about this proposal on the ZWA website.