Town finds Waste Pro in breach of contract

The Summerville Town Council in Summerville, South Carolina, has deemed Waste Pro, Longwood, Florida, in breach of its waste collection contract and is debating turning to other haulers, The Summerville Journal Scene reports.

On March 9, council members authorized the town’s attorney, G.W. Parker, to send a letter to the waste hauler detailing their reasons for believing the company to be in breach of its contract. The council says that a slew of missteps by the hauler, including missed collections, failure to provide recycling carts to residents, using trucks leaking hydraulic fluid and liquid waste on the street, neglecting customer complaints, and other problems are the root of the contention.

Waste Pro’s three-year contract with the town commenced in January. The town issued a notice to cure later that month requesting Waste Pro address its reported problems within 30 days; however, Summerville Town Mayor Wiley Johnson said that the company hasn’t sufficiently addressed the issues to date.

While Johnson says that the town hasn’t finalized a decision on whether they will look for another hauler, he notes that “we have declared them in default and we give them … 60 days to exit.

“We’ll have to have another meeting to figure out: do we really want to do this, do we want to hire somebody else, are we going to put it out to bid to hire somebody else, are we going to look at the original bids that we got … so lot of things to think about,” he said.

Robert Allen, director of government relations for Waste Pro, says that the company is dedicated to working with the city to solve its issues.

“The commitment is here. I want this to be a success,” Allen says. “I believe now the communication between the town and Waste Pro is better than it’s ever been … and it has been a matter of tweaking things to where we’ve met the level of [the city’s] expectation and could perform to that.”

Summerville originally put its waste collection services up for bid in April 2017. The three haulers included in the bid process were Waste Pro; Phoenix-based Republic Services; and North Charleston, South Carolina-based Carolina Waste & Recycling LLC.