Officials in Tisbury and Oak Bluffs Say They're Willing to
Rejoin Refuse District

By MANDY LOCKE

Tisbury and Oak Bluffs selectmen voted Monday afternoon to rejoin
the Martha's Vineyard Refuse Disposal and Resource Recovery
District as customers if the district completes negotiations to build a
composting facility.

The decision could bring all the Island's trash to a single
facility for the first time since eight and a half years ago, when Oak
Bluffs and Tisbury pulled away to start their own transfer station at
the Oak Bluffs landfill.

"They need us. They need the volume," Tisbury selectman
Ray LaPorte said.

The refuse district committee has been negotiating a contract for
more than a year with Waste Options - a Rhode Island composting
company that operates a facility on Nantucket - to build a
composting facility on the Island. The proposal now on the table
includes building a facility to handle the average monthly flow of the
district. When waste flow peaks in July and August, Waste Options would
ship the excess off-Island to the company's composting facility in
Marlboro.

While the contract is far from set, the refuse district committee
voted Nov. 14 to send a few truckloads to the Marlboro facility to test
the feasibility of shipping excess waste off-Island.

"The urgency of our commitment to the district cannot be
stressed enough," said Fred LaPiana, director of Tisbury's
department of public works. Mr. LaPiana said he suspects Waste Options
was holding out to see if Tisbury and Oak Bluffs would join the
composting program.

Tisbury and Oak Bluffs produce about 7,000 tons of waste a year
- half of the Island's total waste.

The draft contract with Waste Options offers the district a price of
$97 per ton after the facility is complete. Another $10 to $12 would be
added for electricity in addition to a few dollars for a scale
attendant. The total cost would be around $110. Waste Options offered
that same $110 price for any tonnage they ship to Marlboro, even picking
up the tab for the Steamship Authority. In addition to that $110 cost,
however, labor and administrative costs would tack an additional $25 per
ton to anything hauled off-Island, bringing the total cost to $135.

Those same figures are being offered to Tisbury and Oak Bluffs,
although their inclusion in the district would double the volume. Thus,
the draft contract offers no volume incentive; however, labor and
administrative costs would decrease if spread across additional tonnage.

The district currently pays about $136 per ton through their
contract with SEMASS. District officials are now studying the economics
of shipping off-Island to the Marlboro plant. Richard Skidmore, chairman
of the district committee, said one of their options is to rebid the
contract.

But the price tag attached to the proposal certainly appeals to Oak
Bluffs and Tisbury. Through a contract with BFI, the two towns now pay
about $140 a ton, and that price will climb to $150 per ton in the next
two years. The towns' BFI contract expires in two and a half
years.

If Waste Options builds a facility at the current district transfer
station in Oak Bluffs, each town must continue offering a recycling
facility to residents. Oak Bluffs and Tisbury would continue to use
their transfer station to handle recycling.

Mr. LaPiana asked selectmen if they might be willing to accept all
of the Island's construction debris at their transfer station. The
composting facility could handle the debris, but district officials
would like to find another site for it, Mr. LaPiana said.

Oak Bluffs selectmen hesitated to make any such commitment.
Selectman Roger Wey said neighbors of the transfer station already
complain about the traffic. He said that increased traffic from Island
construction trucks would exacerbate the problem.

But hosting the Island's construction debris might offer the
towns leverage to negotiate further with the district, Tisbury selectman
Tristan Israel said.

"If they are in a position to need us, we should get the best
bang for our buck," Mr. Israel said.

In the end, selectmen from the two towns decided simply to commit to
the opportunity of participating in a regional composting facility.

"We're just saying we like the idea of
composting," Oak Bluffs selectman Richard Combra said.