New Orleans unveils $20M emergency sanitation plan amid trash crisis

In an effort to put an end to New Orleans’ trash crisis following Hurricane Ida, Mayor LaToya Cantrell has announced the city has hired four emergency waste haulers to increase pickups and trips to the landfill.

As reported by The New Orleans Advocate, the $20 million plan includes more than 20 additional garbage trucks and 35 work crews using dump trucks and front-end loaders to pick up waste. As part of the plan, a decommissioned transfer station on Chef Menteur Highway will be re-opened to shorten the distance each truck will need to travel to unload once it is full.

During a Sept. 23 news conference, Cantrell said the contractors will work under the command of Lt. Euclid Talley, a branch manager with the Governor's Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness, starting in areas with the most severe backups and eventually scouring every block in the city.

“Cleaning up the city entirely remains a top priority, and so with this mission I’m just hoping it is a real demonstration to the public that I’m serious about it,” Cantrell said. 

The four haulers are under a month-long contract. In splitting $20 million, it is reported the contractors will be making about the same amount that the city's two primary waste haulers are paid for trash collections over an entire year.

Cantrell said she will seek reimbursement from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, though it is not clear if the agency will consider municipal garbage collection backups—which started prior to Hurricane Ida but were worsened by the storm—as a recovery expense.

One of the contractors, Phoenix-based Waste Management Inc., which owns the reopened transfer station in New Orleans East, is under contract to reopen the facility and haul garbage from there to the River Birch landfill in Waggaman.

“The operational efficiencies that this project will gain as a result of having a transfer station on the eastern plank of the city are immeasurable,” Sanitation Director Matt Torri told The New Orleans Advocate.   

River Birch LLC, Avondale, Louisiana; Witt O'Brien's LLC, Washington, D.C.; and Ceres Environmental Services, Sarasota, Florida, are the other three contractors participating in the emergency effort, which will begin Sept 24.