THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, March 6, 1996 TAG: 9603050098
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 05 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY BILL REED, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Short : 49 lines
The city's Waste Management division has altered neighborhood trash pickup schedules at the North End and in the College Park and Level Green neighborhoods, creating some confusion despite fliers issued to householders announcing the changes.
Circulars bearing brief messages were stuffed in mail boxes in late January and early February outlining the pending schedule changes, but many residents apparently didn't get the message.
Many of them still hauled trash receptacles and blue containers for recyclable materials to the curbside on the original pickup days. There was some grumbling when they found the still-packed containers later in the day.
Recent changes in collection dates affects only 10 percent of the city's customers, but they were implemented to balance out the weekly workloads for city crews, said Wade Kyle, head of the Waste Management division.
``We haven't made a change in 10 years, and what happened was we had an imbalance (of work),'' he said.
Population shifts in that time created the imbalance and prompted Kyle to reallocate his division's resources.
``We're out there picking up 180,000 tons of garbage every year and we had to make some changes to keep on doing the job,'' he said.
A total of 12,000 city households out of 112,000 served by the department have been affected by the change and most of them are in the North End. Their garbage collection days were switched in early February from Mondays to Tuesdays. The Southeastern Public Service Authority was able to coordinate the collection of recyclable materials with the city's North End schedule change.
However, in the College Park and Level Green areas, where city trash pickups were switched from Wednesdays to Fridays, SPSA has been unable to synchronize its recycling service.
Some residents of these two areas complained last week that the containers of aluminum, plastic bottles and newspapers were not picked up along with their trash on Friday.
Kyle asked these customers to be patient. SPSA doesn't have the equipment to make the Friday collection at present.
``So that means people will want to have their recycling materials out on Wednesdays - for now,'' he said. by CNB