Oakland Deserves Better: A Hard Look at City's CWS Garbage Contract

Hats off to reporter Sam Levin and the East Bay Express for asking hard questions about Oakland City Council's decision last week to award a $1 billion garbage contract to California Waste Solutions, a local company that never had a residential garbage contract before and doesn't have a facility to sort trash. Click here for Levin's full account.

City Councilmember At Large Rebecca Kaplan, who is running for mayor, trumpeted the savings offered by lower rates from CWS, as did Councilmember Larry Reid, whose daughter Treva used to work for CWS.  

The fact that city public works officials and an outside consultant hired by the city recommended against awarding the contract to CWS somehow was overlooked when the Council voted to give the contract to David Duong's CWS. We raised some questions about this in late June.

It's useful to note that when Duong was bidding for a solid waste garbage contract in Contra Costa County last fall, he promoted the availability of the CWS Materials Recycling Facilities in Oakland to accommodate an additional 250,000 tons a year hauled into that West Oakland neighborhood. This is the same neighborhood that has been waiting for CWS and Cass Metals to move their recycling facilities to the former Oakland Army base, a solution that was applauded by all over two years ago and seems no closer to fruition.

At a City Council hearing on July 1, speaker after speaker rose to voice opinions against the CWS proposal. Don Crosatto from Machinists Local 1546, which provides repair mechanics for both CWS and Waste Management, the current holder of the Oakland garbage contract, was particularly critical of CWS's lack of facilities to carry out the contract's requirements.

"CWS is a very small Mom and Pop operation, it doesn't have the facilities to handle 15 trucks, and the last thing you want is 50-100 trucks that need repair but can't be maintained," Crosatto said. "Garbage trucks take a tremendous pounding on the streets. Waste Management has a good solid professional maintenance facility.

On paper CWS will have something four or five years from now. But this is a 365-days a year operation, and switching over to a new provider requires months of prep work a transition of this magnitude."

The East Bay Express reported similar concerns from Doug Bloch, political director for the Teamsters Joint Council 7, which represents drivers at CWS and Waste Management:  "The biggest fear is that people's garbage is not going to picked up," he is quoted as saying. The Teamsters, like the Machinists, had spoken in favor of Waste Management's proposal due to concerns about potential service problems under CWS.

Another fear, Bloch said, is that CWS's rates will eventually exceed the 24 percent increase it promised to $36.82, compared to the 30 percent increase to $38.71 offered by Waste Management. Both are substantially more than the current homeowner's rate of $29.80.

"They are putting together an operation that doesn't currently exist, so they can only guess what their costs are going to be," Bloch said of CWS.

Transitions to new garbage companies often bring challenges like missed pickups, Bloch told East Bay Express, "but what exacerbates it with CWS is the fact they are taking on a project that's bigger than anything they've done, and they don't have any of the infrastructure in place right now."

Much of CWS's proposal is based on building a new sorting and recycling facility at the former army base site in West Oakland, the same one everyone has been waiting for since 2012. Now CWS says that project, called the North Gateway Facility, may take three to five years to complete, and it still need permits to proceed.

Those issues didn't seem to stop the City Council. Levin points out additional environmental and recycling concerns about CWS's track record, notably its failure to  reach agreed diversion goals - to divert food waste and recyclable materials from landfill - in its contract with the city of San Jose since 2006.

Levin said Peter Slote, Oakland's acting solid waste and recycling program supervisor, told him a week before the Council vote: "It's a profound difference in the environmental outcomes," pointing to the city's findings that Waste Management, over 10 years, could divert more than 200,000 additional tons of recyclables and green waste from the landfill compared to CWS. That's equivalent to one year's worth of Oakland garbage.

Mayor Jean Quan, Councilmember and mayoral challenger Libby Schaaf and Council President Pat Kernighan each took time to acknowledge the hard work and many years which staff put into the solid waste process at the public hearing, yet they and the entire City Council went against staff recommendations. At some point Oakland's leaders have to ask themselves if their trust their departmental staffs of not? Otherwise, why have them spend hundreds of hours and significant resources towards a matter just to simply undermine those efforts based on which way the wind is blowing politically. Don't get me wrong, I support their support of a minority-owned local business, but to ignore staff's recommendations twice seems counterintuitive to smart government.

Of course, Kaplan, in her self-congratulatory "we saved you money" email to campaign supporters, never mentioned Peter Slote's concerns or those of the Teamsters or Machinists spokesmen. This contract deserves a hard look from the Council before its final vote on August 13, and voters should remind these politicians that Oakland deserves better.

Nothing Seems to Stick to Recology, Just Wondering…

Nothing Seems to Stick to Recology, Just Wondering…

More than a year ago we wrote about watching this Recology thing … the sage of a company with a monopoly since 1932 on San Francisco's garbage contract, and shocking whistle-blower allegations from a former employee, Brian McVeigh, that claimed the company made fraudulent overpayments in the city's celebrated recycling program. 

Now it turns out that a jury recently found Recology at fault in not properly reporting concrete waste that was sent to landfills while the company collected a $1.36 million bonus by reporting the concrete had been recycled. As The SF Weekly reported: "A jury last month said that Recology falsely claimed it diverted enough refuse from area landfills to earn a bonus in 2008 (the result of an agreement with the city in which Recology customers are on the hook for the bonus). As such, customers are due back that $1.3 million."

Bloomberg flatly suggested in its headline that San Francisco's recycling claims are garbage, and the San Francisco Bay Guardian devoted five pages online to what it called the garbage game, asking is Recology fudging the figures on how much San Francisco waste is being diverted from the landfill, with the complicity of city officials.

 

It's simply astonishing that nothing seems to stick to Recology. In February 2013, we cited a national industry publication, Waste 360, that had called into question claims by Recology and San Francisco's Mayor Ed Lee that the city diverts 80 percent of its waste while sending only 20 percent to landfills. Writing in Waste 360, Chaz Miller, the state programs director for the Environmental Industry Associations, said the city's numbers did not hold up under scrutiny. The city only reported sending 440,000 tons of waste to landfills, which it said accounts for 20 percent of its waste. That would mean San Francisco generated 2,220,000 tons of waste. If San Francisco stood by that number, Miller wrote, then each man, woman and child in San Francisco generated 2.73 tons of trash that year, or more than three times as much as EPA's estimated national per person waste generation rate.

News reports focused on Recology's close political ties to Mayor Lee and suggested that San Francisco officials were not keen for McVeigh's lawsuit to succeed. Why is that, one wonders? The SF Bay Guardian, in its lengthy report on the lawsuit, said David Anton, McVeigh's attorney, suggested Recology's close ties to powerful city officials might have something to do with the cits lack of interest in targeting the company for the improperly received incentive payments, an assertion which Recology spokesman Eric Potashner told the Guardian was "completely untrue."

Still, it's worth remembering that Recology and its predecessor Nor-Cal have held a 80-year monopoly on trash-hauling in San Francisco, and in 2012 it spent $1.7 million to defeat a city referendum that would have opened garbage collection to competitive bidding. Finally, let's not forget its attempt to enter Oakland's $1.2 billion garbage contract bid with a brazen suggestion that the city use public financing to build a local waste facility for Recology to manage! I mean, c'mon!

Oakland’s Garbage Mess: Just When You Thought It Was Safe!

Like the movie Jaws, Recology just doesn't seem to go away. A City Hall source says Recology's lobbyists are working hard to get into the already jumbled bidding for this $1.2 billion 20-year contract. Remember, on May 29 the City Council rejected staff's recommendation to retain Waste Management as Oakland’s primary garbage handler (along with a 50% rate increase!).

Recology unceremoniously withdrew from the bidding process last year when Minna Tao told the June 18 2013 City Council meeting, she was "dismayed" at the process and that the city's contract conditions made it "non-conducive" to bid. City Council President Pat Kernighan then called for changing the contract terms to 20 years and to allow Recology to rebid for the contract.

The council reacted negatively to Waste Management’s proposal, especially after spending nearly $1 million on consultants to bring in multiple bidders who never materialized. One can speculate that Council members are encouraging the likes of Recology to jump back into the mix. What's wrong with this?

Recology’s Minna Tao is the same person who, in a letter to the city’s Garrett Fitzgerald, encouraged Oakland to use public financing to build a local waste facility for it to manage. The fact that this multi-million dollar company, with a monopoly over San Francisco’s trash contract since 1932, is asking is insulting in itself. But floating this idea knowing Oakland’s dire financial situation is worse!

Recology must certainly smell blood, as the 'best and final offers' staff was directed to get from Waste Management and California Waste Solutions are likely not going to satisfy city council, particularly during an election year!

Don’t be surprised if council delays the garbage contract matter until after the November elections given that rates will inevitably be going up no matter who the city chooses.

Win-Win Is Turning into Stinking Garbage Mess in West Oakland

I picked up a flyer at the Lake Merritt Farmer's Market last weekend that almost knocked me off my feet. Remember how West Oakland celebrated a landmark agreement with the city two years ago to relocate two recycling businesses that had fouled that neighborhood with pollution and fumes from hundreds of trucks rumbling through that residential area?

Remember how Mayor Jean Quan and the City Council touted the win-win solution to relocate both California Waste Solutions (CWS) and Custom Alloy Scrap Sales (CASS) Metals from West Oakland to the former Oakland Army Base?

Guess what? That win-win solution is turning into a stinking mess. Debt problems for the Port of Oakland are impacting on redevelopment of the former Army Base. That seems to be creating delays that will push back the relocation of those two firms. Now, to make matters worse, one of them, CWS, wants to expand its Materials Recovery Facility (MRF) at 10th Street and Pine. CWS is bidding with the City of Oakland to handle garbage services and needs to expand the facility to do that work in the neighborhood it was going to leave!

This is not what they and the city promised when the City Council voted 7-0 in 2011 to pursue negotiations with CASS and CWS. It was a grand solution to a decades-old problem and promised to rid West Oakland of daily pollution from diesel recycling trucks rumbling through its streets. Now West Oakland may face garbage trucks as well.

Why is no one demanding that the City keep to its agreement? Nothing has changed for the people of West Oakland. These large West Oakland recycling companies can be moved from a residential area to vacant industrial land, namely the 28-acre acre North Gateway area of the former base CWS and CASS were going to buy adjacent to the East Bay Municipal Utility District's wastewater treatment plant. The win-win solution promised community benefits and new jobs resulting from the relocation as well.

Instead, CWS, which has a recycling contract with the city, is bidding for the city's garbage contract and needs to expand the same MRF that was going to move to the army base. If the City approves this proposal, hundreds more diesel trucks with pour into the West Oakland neighborhood to that facility located directly across the street from residential homes.

What is going on in this city? They put out an RFP which Waste Management apparently won with a low bid. They went through all this fancy secrecy about what they could or could not discuss in public about this contract and other shenanigans related to the Oakland garbage contract (see some earlier Mad Ivan rants on the subject: see Oakland's Zero-Waste Plans Are Commendable - But Can We Afford Them? and I'm still watching this Recology thing...Are You? and Something Stinks in EBMUD).

Who knows how this shambolic situation is going to end? In the meantime, the company that committed to West Oakland residents that it would relocate both of its MRF operations from West Oakland (the other in at 3300 Wood Street), now has no current time frame on when it will move to the former army base. It means the suffering isn't over for West Oakland - the poor air quality, the pollution and diesel truck traffic that perpetuates an injustice we thought was past. The community's health and well-being for children and families continues to be at risk, regardless of the promises of corporations and politicians.

As the flyer at the farmer's market says: We need to Clean West Oakland Now!

Unfinished Business - Measure Y, Crime, Coliseum City, West Oakland

Even when Oakland's future looks so promising these days, beginning with the Swinging A's in 2014, this city continues to stumble badly on big initiatives that fail to materialize. Time and again, our political and civic leaders fail to rally and deliver step-changing tangible results, and the voters are left behind - whether it is a Measure Y to sustain police staffing levels, workable strategies to reduce crime, committing to push through major developments in West Oakland or facing facts about Howard Terminal versus Coliseum City.

Crime and the perception that Oakland can't or won't do anything about it is the thread that connects these four issues. This inability to deliver has sacrificed police manpower, hurt economic development across the city, delayed urban revival schemes in West Oakland, and cast doubt on grand, deep-pocket schemes like Coliseum City. It makes one wonder if our leaders really think Oakland can be great! Watch what they do, not what they say.

Lacking the political will to tackle crime has consequences beyond fear, injury and theft. Oakland has lost millions of dollars of retail spending to places like Emeryville and Walnut Creek because big retailers are reluctant to locate here. This retail leakage, estimated at about $1 billion a year, is what Oakland residents spent by shopping outside Oakland. It translates into more than $80 million in lost sales tax revenues that also go to Emeryville and Walnut Creek. Our tax dollars that could fund higher police staffing levels!

Measure Y was an attempt to provide additional funds to maintain minimum police staffing levels at 802 officers. Passed in 2004, it collected a parcel tax and parking assessments to generate $20 million a year to support police staffing. That stopped in 2010, when 80 police offcers were laid off and Oakland no longer met the minimum staffing requirement to collect the tax. How humiliating for us! Have our elected officials learned anything since then?

Now the city council wants to renew Measure Y, and this time, they hope it will turn out differently. This is a hot political potato, not just for the Council but for mayoral candidates with their different plans for increasing Oakland's police force to 800 or 900 officers or more. Here is where the rubber hits the road. Taxpayers funded Measure Y, violence prevention advocates received the funding they wanted, but police staffing plummeted, crime still dogs Oakland's reputation, and all this makes some big property investors wary of doing business here.

Civic leaders play a role in all of these threads of promise and despair as well. The mayors and city council members have been treading water over the West Oakland Specific Plan, and some 25 plans that preceded it, despite the best efforts of planners and community leaders to ask and answer what kind of housing, transport and new jobs could flourish there after the Cypress Freeway collapsed in the 1989 earthquake.

Just look at Howard Terminal and the close-minded greed of local businessmen who insist on seducing the public with glittering images of a new baseball stadium near Jack London Square, when they know that solution brings more problems and ignores others that will hurt Oakland far more than help it.

It's all very glamorous to see Don Knauss, Gary Rogers and Doug Boxer promote a downtown stadium, but they don't address the prohibitive costs of cleaning up a contaminated harbor site. They ignore the traffic and transit mayhem around a new ballpark that would draw 38,000 fans, cars, pedestrians and shuttle buses to an area without a nearby BART stop. DUH!! These conflicts arise from placing a Major League Baseball stadium inside a working port, but they just point to the pretty pictures and say Oakland can be like the Giants in San Francisco.

They prefer to ignore the fact that Oakland cannot afford infrastructure for two separate sports venues, that the city still carries $120 million bonded indebtedness for the Oracle Arena and Coliseum if Knauss, Rogers and Boxer persuade the A's to come downtown. The 50-acre Howard Terminal site in no way offers the scale of development, housing, jobs, retail and sports possibilities already proposed on the 800-acre site at Coliseum City.

I bring up all of these issues because The Chronicle's Chip Johnson wrote a column this week about Oakland City Council's current debate on extending Measure Y. He says the council wants to address the real issues about Measure Y this time. But he points out that the voters have been left behind before, and they know it. As he concludes, "if there is one thing Oakland residents want more than police on our streets, it's a government based on honesty, not deception, word games and personal political agendas."

Does waterfront stadium threaten Port of Oakland’s future?

Pictures of a waterfront stadium for the Oakland A’s at Howard Terminal are glamorous, but the site near Jack London Square and the politics pushing that solution are dark, murky and may pose a real threat to the Port’s economy.

Last July, when the Port of Oakland settled a lawsuit with SSA Terminals to move from Howard Terminal to a mega-terminal elsewhere in the port, unions and port businesses sounded a warning about putting a ballpark there.

The unions said the deal could expose the port to retaliatory lawsuits from other waterfront conglomerates seeking similar concessions. Last month, unions citing the 73,000 jobs the port generates across the Bay Area urged the Port to continue to use Howard Terminal for maritime purposes.

Did the port commissioners listen? No. Instead, these appointees of Mayor Jean Quan rejected three maritime proposals for the 50-acre site, and left open the door for local businessmen to work their political ties with Quan for an A’s waterfront ballpark.

Now a letter is circulating that shows the potential danger this waterfront ballpark can pose to the port, according to those who have seen the letter.

Several port businesses have written to Quan and Port Executive Director Chris Lytle asking how the city and port plan to address traffic, pollution, environmental, health, density and other port issues that come with putting a stadium smack in the heart of the nation’s fifth busiest port.

Sources familiar with the letter said these companies have invested millions of dollars and employ thousands of people in the port. Given this investment, they ask Quan about concerns that arise from the proposed ballpark and her political support for that proposal and changing the industrial zoning of the area.

Their concerns included impact on energy infrastructure uses around Howard Terminal, who pays to relocate businesses from near the site, how to safeguard against stadium negative impact on port traffic needs and existing port operations, and, where the city relocate industrial uses now near Howard Terminal.

The Port’s own staff had raised other issues in a report last September to commissioners. They said a non-maritime use on the site, like a ballpark, would raise obstacles for environmental, maritime, pollution, traffic and density concerns that would take years to overcome, they warned. Lew Wolff, part owner of the A’s flatly said in December he did not want a waterfront stadium.

Before you scratch your heads, there’s more.

Wolff and Mark Davis are talking separately with developers at Coliseum City about an alternative proposal to keep all three teams – A’s, Raiders and Warriors – at their current home. This plan is an 800-acre sports, housing and retail complex, with new, deep-pocket investors who can turn a pipedream there into a reality.

Still, the business quartet of Clorox President Don Knauss, Signature Developer head Michael Ghielmetti, Dreyers Ice Cream CEO Gary Rogers and former lobbyist Doug Boxer plows ahead with their own development agenda – coincidentally Ghielmetti has a major development nearby in Brooklyn Basin. No one wants to address the fact that Howard Terminal would only keep one team in Oakland, and this proposal is bound to raise major environmental, maritime use, traffic and pollution concerns that do not apply to Coliseum City. And is anyone out there asking if Oakland can afford both projects?

When Port Commissioners voted last month to reject three maritime proposals that would continue to use Howard Terminal for bulk shipping or port purposes, several speakers made the point that the commissioners should make sure any use of the site is compatible with the port’s needs and potential.

Instead, Howard Terminal has significant contamination and environmental issues that opponents can exploit through the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) processes, it lacks dirct access to mass transit (the closest BART stations West Oakland and 12th Street are each nearly one mile away from HT) and the Port faces a revenue shortfall of $10 million a year it is losing since SSA cut short its lease by four years as part of the settlement.

One last note: The San Francisco and Oakland newspapers have not reported extensively on many of these issues. Were it not for Rhamesis Muncada’s thorough coverage in his blog newballpark.org, we would be much more in the dark and murk.

It’s also curious that little or no coverage was given to Coliseum City’s meeting with 150 sports fans in February. See our report from the February 6 meeting. Curious.

Whither Howard Terminal – stadium or maritime use – Port of Oakland To Decide

The Port of Oakland has rejected three maritime proposals for the now vacant Howard Terminal, clearing the way for local businessmen to bring forward their plan for a waterfront ballpark there for the Oakland A’s.

Last month, you will recall, Coliseum City was in the spotlight, with a developer telling 150 sports fans at Oakland Airport Hilton that big money from Colony Capital and Hayah Holdings in Dubai will fund a plan for three sports facilities to keep the A’s, Raiders and Warriors in Oakland. See our report here.

Mayor Jean Quan has kind words for both sites, even if Oakland can only afford one venue for sports teams. Howard Terminal’s 50 acres near Jack London Square can only handle one stadium, and that is a one mile walk to the closest BART station and brings a bunch of environmental and maritime issues that Port staff say will cause significant problems for a non-compliant (stadium) use.

The port’s Board took a 7-0 vote to reject three proposals: Bowie Resources wanted to build a bulk coal shipping facility; California Capital & Investment Group (CCIG, Phil Tagami’s company) and Kinder Morgan wanted to build a bulk facility but no one was sure what it would export; and Schnitzer Steel, which owns land adjacent to Howard Terminal, wanted three acres on a long-term lease to build a maintenance facility. The Sierra Club, CREDO and other environmentalists made up most of the 26 speakers who addressed the board. Speakers were limited to one minute each.

A port staff member summarized why each proposals should be rejected: Bowie Resources coal export was not compatible with state emphasis on renewable energy sources, CCIG did not provide enough information on what kind of bulk exports they want at their proposed facility, Schnitzer’s bid was for only a small portion of Howard Terminal site with a long-term lease.

What no one discussed at the board meeting were all the reasons the port staff specifically endorsed maritime use of Howard Terminal rather than a non-compliant use, like a stadium, in their report to the Port Board on September 26.(Note: If you use a Safari browser, this report may come up garbled, try the url http://bayplanningcoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Item-5.1.pdf in a different browser, it's worth it!)

Blogger Marine Layer at newballpark.org has enumerated on these issues – contaminated soil and groundwater, long distance from nearest BART station, Bay Coastal Development Commission requirements for maritime use of the terminal, Tidelands Trust covenants for maritime use – in recent posts.

In fact, the meeting and speakers did not mention Oakland A’s, professional sports teams or the political quandary that Mayor Jean Quan and city officials face with two competing proposals where only one offers a solution to keep all three teams in Oakland. See our report from the February 6 meeting that sports fans had with the Coliseum City developer.

The board room could not contain the spill-over crowd of perhaps 100 people. Jessica Laurie, who described herself as a Sierra Club attorney, told the board she was part of a group who had fought battles over six coal export proposals in the Northwest. She said they had defeated three of the proposals there, and now the companies wanted to bring their proposals to Oakland. She promised many more supporters will show up if the board considered any proposal for exporting bulk coal, not just Bowie Resources.

Most of the opposition focused on environmental issues, and one opponent Kate O'Hara of EBASE, went out of her way to encourage the board to keep maritime uses on the site compatible with a working port. After the meeting, she said she wanted maritime uses at Howard Terminal, as opposed to a stadium, because EBASE wants to create the best long-term job opportunities for the port.

None of the speakers or board members mentioned the possible stadium proposal. Board member Alan Yee said a Howard Terminal Subcommittee of the board will meet next week to look at other ways for using the site, so the A’s ballpark proposal may surface then.

After the public remarks, Board member Michael Colbruno, running for City Council District 2, and Bryan Parker, running for mayor, trotted out expected campaign appeals. Colbruno wanted to reiterate his opposition to coal, and said it would breach the sacred trust the board holds for the well-being of the community. He said the port was the agricultural hub of the universe, so let's ship almonds and wine. Parker wanted to ensure fairness in all RFPs and to make sure the port is open for business.

Colbruno is an interesting figure wearing many hats, and the TrashRecology.com site recently published a letter from an Oakland resident that raises questions about his relationship with Mayor Quan, and about his and her roles in deciding where Oakland’s professional sports teams will stay or move.

According to public records and the TrashRecology site, Colbruno is co-chair of Mayor Quan’s re-election campaign, a port commissioner, he was a lobbyist for Recology while he was city planning commissioner and even reported last August after Quan appointed him to the port board that he had lobbied four city councilors on Recology’s behalf. Now he wants to run for Oakland City Council in District 2.

Colbruno spoke piously about “breach of trust” to the community if the port board were to support coal exports. Now the port board approaches a bigger decision on whether to approve a non-maritime use of Howard Terminal for the Oakland A’s, despite the urging by its own staff report to pursue only compliant maritime use. In this context, Colbruno’s piety could be called into question.

An Oakland resident pointed out to Trash Recology how Colbruno’s different roles raise questions of public interest and propriety:

“Is this kind of cross-over from the private to public sector well known and accepted as proper? How does one in such a role separate public responsibilities and personal/professional interests (what some people might call a conflict of interest?) Has any of this lobbying by city officials on behalf of private companies been investigated before? Do newspapers simply accept that companies can have monopoly contracts, that they can hire city officials as lobbyists, that these city officials can be appointed to decision-making positions that directly impact on the private companies they (in a lobbying role) were trying to help, close to and possibly at the same time that they were supposed to be acting in the public's interest.”

Watch this space.