DATE: Thursday, August 7, 1997              TAG: 9708060011

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B10  EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Editorial 

                                            LENGTH:   45 lines

CURBSIDE RETURNS THE LONG-AWAITED CURBSIDE RECYCLING PROGRAM BEGAN THIS WEEK AT THE BEACH.

Finally, 13 months after Virginia Beach dropped the Southeastern Public Service Authority's recycling plan in a dispute over fees, curbside recycling has returned to the resort city.

Ironically, the new program will cost about three times more than the controversial fee SPSA proposed in 1996, but in return, customers will receive a vastly expanded service.

Virginia Beach officials say the new program will carry a hefty price tag of $3.7 million a year.

They also note that the city anticipates saving about $2 million in landfill disposal fees annually. That works out to about $1.50 per household each month for services.

SPSA originally demanded a $1 per household fee for its services, but that was halved to 50 cents in an attempt to lure Virginia Beach back.

Time will tell if this public money is being well-spent - without widespread participation the costs of the curbside program could rise even higher.

But experience shows that Virginia Beach residents are dogged recyclers. They demonstrated that during the past year. By terminating curbside pickup, the city forced the environmentally conscious to take extreme measures to recycle. Recyclers were forced to transform their cars into mini trash trucks as they drove their refuse to 50 drop-off centers around the city. Many of those drop-off centers were unappetizing places, strewn with broken glass and piled high with trash long overdue for collection - not a good way to entice people into recycling, but an estimated 58 percent of households did recycle.

Now families in the city's 85,000 single-family homes are being issued 95 gallon receptacles into which they can throw glass, plastics, junk mail, cardboard, phone books and cereal boxes. Those living in townhouses will get 18-gallon bins. Neighborhoods are less likely to be decorated with litter on recycling days, since the new bins have lids.

So far about 14,000 bins have been distributed, and pickup began Tuesday in some areas. The city will phase in the program until October.

The new recycling program has a catchy slogan: Just push it to the curb. We'll take it from there.

We hope Virginia Beach residents will do just that.

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