Lexington County has issues with trash pickup. Why not mandate it?
Although only around a third of households in the unincorporated parts of Lexington County have their trash picked up by a garbage collector, the county received thousands of complaints about the service in the last year.
The complaints come as the county has spent years trying to sort out its trash problem – many residents who have long been used to carrying their trash to free collection centers have opposed measures to mandate curbside collection, but the county’s waste management team has repeatedly sounded the alarm on how Lexington’s growing population is overburdening its collection sites.
“We do have issues with the current vendors due to the system that we have. They just don’t have the funds to pay for the hiring bonuses that everybody’s paying because they’re driving 10 miles to pick up two houses so they can’t pay what Richland County is paying because in Richland, they’re stopping at every house,” Lee McIntyre, the county’s waste management director, said at a November 2024 meeting.
Who picks up your trash depends on what part of the county you live in. A handful of municipalities in the county provide the service, but those living in the unincorporated areas are split into seven trash pickup districts, serviced by different companies, each with different rates and levels of customer satisfaction. As a result of a slew of complaints against one company in particular, GFL Environmental, the county dropped it as a provider earlier this year.
Three companies – Capital Waste Services (CWS), Waste Management and New South West/Tyler’s Sanitation of Columbia – service a large portion of the nearly 700 square mile county next to the state capital, hauling more than 51,000 tons of garbage, recycling and yard waste every year, according to county procurement documents.
The county uses multiple companies because of the large amount of the county that’s unincorporated, “which prevent a single county-wide, unified curbside collection program because state law doesn’t allow for creating special districts to serve only certain parts of the county,” a spokesperson for the county told The State in an email.
“The county is exploring ways to expand curbside service to more residents in the future.”
Depending on which trash collection district people are in, they might pay a rate anywhere from $28.50 to $36.50 a month, which are typically billed quarterly, according to the rates listed in the county’s contract with the trash companies.
But improving the system is complicated, county officials said. For residents who don’t want to pay for curbside pickup, there are 11 collection and recycling centers and a landfill that they can take their trash and recycling. Mandating curbside pickup for all residents would cause people who might not want the service to have to pay for it. On the flip side, when the county requires the companies to service everyone in an area, even more rural areas, the trash companies are left to visit neighborhoods and areas where they might only be picking up for a handful of houses.
“I feel countywide mandatory garbage collection is unnecessary at this time,” County Councilwoman Charli Wessinger said in a text to The State. “Those who want garbage service choose to pay for that now and those who do not want to pay for that service have the option to carry their trash to a local waste collection station.” She added that introducing more garbage trucks to the county’s rural roads could cost the county in road maintenance.
Collection centers overrun, understaffed
The county council has considered requiring all residents to use curbside pickup on numerous occasions, at the request of two different solid waste directors, to no avail. In 2021, the council discussed plans to require residents to use curbside collection as the county’s solid waste director complained of over-burdened trash collection sites.
At that time, the daily number of vehicles visiting collection sites had gone up 33% in five years and added more than $1 million in operating costs for the county, Solid Waste Director Dave Eger told county council in 2021.
Most other residents take their trash to a county collection site, but Eger warned that could become increasingly difficult. The daily number of vehicles visiting those sites has gone up 33% in the last five years, and the higher volume has added more than $1 million to the sites’ operating costs, from $2.19 million in 2016 to $3.48 million last year.
In October of last year, the county council entertained an ordinance that would require every resident to pay a fee for curbside collection, as opposed to taking their trash to collection centers for free. Between July 2023 and June 2024, the county saw 2.2 million vehicles come through its 11 collection sites, said McIntyre to the county council in November.
In a November 2024 public hearing, 122 people came out to oppose the ordinance and 114 submitted online comments in opposition. Only three people spoke out in favor and the county dropped the proposal.
