Warren County reviews solid-waste hauling operations and seeks grant-funded truck, explores food-scrap pilot and recycling grant

Warren County officials told the Building and Grounds Committee that the county’s new hauling operation is keeping pace with collections but lacks spare capacity to absorb equipment failures and heavy seasonal surges, prompting plans to request an additional driver and to seek grant funding for a truck.

The solid-waste presentation opened with county staff reporting that vendors left some containers behind earlier in the year and that crews have since caught up. “We can certainly right now continue to haul and stay on getting the containers removed from each one of the facilities and getting them dumped,” said Kevin (staff member), while noting the operation has little slack for repairs when a container or truck is lost.

Committee members and staff said the county runs a much smaller fleet than private haulers and therefore has limited redundancy: “They don’t have 3 trucks, they have a fleet of 10 to 15 trucks. … We do not have that,” said Scott (staff member), describing private hauler capacity as a contrast to the county’s two new trucks plus older equipment. Staff said one of the recurring operational challenges is that the county’s hauls are continuous across the three participating municipalities, leaving few downtime windows to repair containers.

To address the capacity shortfall, staff said they will ask…