SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Waste Management of Alameda County, Inc. (WMAC) today asked a California Superior Court to order the City and County of San Francisco to halt any further action to steer a $130 million waste disposal contract to Recology, saying the Department of the Environment (DOE) has “betrayed the City’s obligation to the competitive procurement process.”
“The City’s effort to whitewash its prior unauthorized conduct, its absolute abandonment of the required competitive process, its reneging on its commitment to a full environmental review of its landfill and transportation project, its back-door effort to now sole source the contract … prove that the City has bound itself to a course of action that is beyond its legal authority,” says the lawsuit.
According to San Francisco’s Charter, the Board of Supervisors (Board) must approve contracts with terms of ten-years or more and in excess of $10 million. Since 2009, when the contract was first proposed, the contract has been characterized in every procurement document and even in a proposed approval resolution submitted to the Board last month, as a 10-year deal – until last week, when the term was reduced to less than 10 years.
“WMAC is compelled to file the lawsuit now after last week’s sudden proposed change by the DOE to alter the term of the disposal contract with Recology in order to evade a public vote by the Board,” said Barry Skolnick, President of WMAC. “That’s a stunning move – six years later – to evade a Board vote and avoid public scrutiny, a move that expedites the award to Recology.”
WMAC’s lawsuit asserts that the City continues to flout the competitive bidding rules in order to sole source the contract to Recology, and now must be compelled to follow the rules and negotiate a contract with bidder WMAC, which has provided San Francisco waste disposal at its Altamont Landfill in Alameda County since 1987, or if it refuses to take that course of action it must go back out to bid and conduct a fair, transparent and open process.
The current contract with WMAC is set to expire in early 2016. WMAC has offered to continue receiving San Francisco’s waste at its Altamont Landfill in Alameda County at rates lower than what the DOE is proposing Recology be paid to dispose of the city’s garbage at a landfill it owns outside Vacaville in Solano County. The Altamont Landfill has at least 40 additional years of remaining capacity.
The DOE has also refused to require an Environmental Impact Report (EIR) for Recology’s current plan to truck all of San Francisco’s waste along Interstate 80 to its Solano County landfill after the DOE aggressively touted a politically appealing “green rail” hauling system to a landfill in Yuba County. Next, “the City contorted the clear language of the Request for Proposals and agreed to Recology’s request to substitute the ‘Green Rail’ project with the ‘brown-truck’ proposal,” according to the lawsuit.
The Sierra Club Bay Area Chapter and the Solano County Orderly Growth Committee both oppose the Recology Hay Road plan. According to the Sierra Club, “The change would mean more carbon pollution, less money for open space protection and a disincentive to achieving the city’s zero waste goals — so the Sierra Club is doing everything it can to stop the plan.” http://theyodeler.org/?p=10538
Media Conference Call
A media conference call on this topic is scheduled for today, Tuesday July 21, 2015, 5:00pm – 5:45pm Pacific Time. Media interested in participating should dial (800) 416-7988 and use conference ID: 90834828
WMAC is represented by Reed Smith LLP and Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan LLP.
A complete copy of the lawsuit can be found at www.dotheeir.com.
ABOUT WASTE MANAGEMENT OF ALAMEDA COUNTY
Waste Management of Alameda County is a community-based provider of environmental solutions. We offer residential and commercial curbside collection for recycling, composting and disposal. Our fleet of natural gas vehicles are powered with gas made from trash at the Altamont Landfill. WM EarthCare (www.wmearthcare.com) is our closed loop solution to organic waste. We deliver local solutions with the knowledge and resources of the nation’s largest recycler, Waste Management.
