County mulls the future of Ivy Materials Utilization Center

A company once sued by the regional waste authority is now being eyed favorably as a private candidate to run one of the governmental authority’s operations.

In recent discussions about privatizing operation of the Ivy Materials Utilization Center, several Albemarle County supervisors complimented the work of van der Linde Recycling of Zion Crossroads.

Supervisors Duane E. Snow, Ann H. Mallek, Dennis S. Rooker and Kenneth C. Boyd all said they had visited the van der Linde facility and were impressed with what they saw.

“It’s amazing what they’re doing down there,” Snow said at the board’s Feb. 1 meeting. “They’re recycling about 92 percent of the construction waste, and about 35 percent of the household waste, with the potential of getting that up to almost 100 percent.”

The Rivanna Solid Waste Authority, jointly funded by Albemarle and Charlottesville to handle certain solid waste services, alleged in a suit several years ago that van der Linde’s drivers had lied about the origin of trash they brought to the RWSA facility in Zion Crossroads, in order to avoid payment of tipping fees.

The suit was dropped in January 2010, when Peter van der Linde agreed to pay the RSWA $600,000 to settle the dispute. His own recycling center is adjacent to the RSWA facility in Zion Crossroads.

Van der Linde said the suit is a non-issue.

“It’s not relevant, it’s behind us … I’m about recycling and it’s unfortunate that it always gets mentioned,” he said.

Privatization is just one option of several the county Board of Supervisors will mull in the coming months as it decides how to run the station.

Albemarle spokeswoman Lee Catlin said the county budgeted a $350,000 total contribution to the RSWA for fiscal year 2011-12.

The RSWA’s executive director, Thomas L. Frederick Jr., said the total operation of the transfer station would likely come to $50,000 to $60,000 for the current fiscal year, far under what was budgeted.

The county’s total contribution, Frederick said, also goes to environmental remediation of the closed Ivy landfill and the operation of the McIntire Recycling Center. Since the landfill closed in 2001, the city and county have been partly responsible for the costs of environmental cleanup at the facility. In 2010, the Environmental Protection Agency noted raised levels of the metal cobalt in groundwater around the site.

Studies at the time said the levels of cobalt didn’t pose a threat to humans, but were higher than the EPA allowed.

The Ivy Landfill opened in 1966 and in 1998 was filled in before being closed entirely in 2001. Now it serves solely as a transfer station, where trash is collected before being transferred to a landfill.

The city of Charlottesville helps pay for the McIntire facility. The city, however, recently stopped contributing funds to the Ivy transfer station.

Rooker said he was impressed with the van der Linde operation, but said limiting price increases would be key to negotiations if the Ivy station operation is privatized.

“As Mr. Snow pointed out, contracting with a private company may be the best option,” Rooker said in an interview. “The question is, how much can you, if we were to contract, how far can you go in that contract as far as limiting price increases. Obviously, the private company has to have incentive to go into the contract, but I think to a certain extent you can limit price increases over time.”

Boyd said he would like to see the Ivy center completely privatized and city representation on the RSWA board reduced.

“Personally, I don’t think the county needs to be in the trash business,” Boyd said. “I would like to see us privatize it. I think the private sector can deal with it more effectively and more cheaply.”

This is not the first time officials have expressed interest in privatizing. In 2009, the RSWA requested bids to privatize the Ivy center and the McIntire Recycling Center, but the operations ultimately remained under the RSWA.

Boyd said his bottom line for the facility is to limit county expense and keep trash off the sides of Albemarle’s roads.

“My hope would be that somebody could take it over and operate it for profit without us having to contribute any money,” he said. “The biggest thing is to have someone pick up the trash for our constituents [at the Ivy facility], because we don’t want it to end up on the side of the road.”

Van der Linde said his company is ready and willing to help, should the county’s trash services be put out for bid.

“I have made it abundantly clear that I would be more than happy to do it at no cost to the county,” he said. “I hope they see it as an opportunity — we certainly do. We’re constantly looking to raise the bar on recycling in this area any way we can.”

Boyd also accused the city of dropping its end of a deal that sees the city and county having joint responsibility for the two RSWA-run trash and recycling facilities.

Because it has stopped funding the Ivy transfer station, Boyd said, the city should lose some representation on the RSWA board.

“The city has basically not lived up to their end of the deal for many years, because they were supposed to take all their trash out there, but they haven’t done that for many years, and now they have decided to stop funding it altogether,” he said. “Why should the city have an equal number of votes when they aren’t contributing?”

City Councilor Dave Norris said Charlottesville’s representation on the RSWA board is a legitimate question, but the council hasn’t had an opportunity to discuss it yet. Former Councilor Holly Edwards, who had represented the city on the RSWA board, had intended to call a work session on the matter, he said, but left office before there was an opportunity.

“We haven’t had a chance as a council to have the discussion whether we should maintain any representation on [RSWA] at all,” Norris said. “Until we have that discussion, it’s a little premature for me to opine on it, but I can see where Mr. Boyd is coming from … It’s a legitimate question.”

Norris said the city’s primary interest in continued RSWA membership is use of the McIntire Road Recycling Center.

“Even though the city has a much more robust curbside recycling program than we used to, I think there is some sense among residents, and I tend to agree, that we want to keep McIntire,” he said.

Frederick said restructuring the RSWA board, which currently holds three city and three county representatives, would require legal action. He added that the city and county are bound by federal law to contribute to the remediation of the old Ivy Landfill site.

Other options for the Ivy site include having the county and RSWA continue to run the place together or have it go entirely to county control.

County staff is currently studying the options, Director of Community Development Mark Graham said.

“Right now, all the options are on the table,” he said. “It’s really a little premature to speculate on the outcome.”

If the facility were to be made private, Graham said, the county would have to issue a request for proposals and accept bids to manage the Ivy center. Van der Linde would have to submit bids like any other company, he said, if he were interested.