New Orleans residents and public officials filled City Council chambers Nov. 2 to hear waste management officials say that the tenets of the City Sanitation Ordinance and Contract are outdated.

According to these officials, the contract tenets were composed with pre-Katrina conditions in mind and don’t apply to New Orleans’ current situation.

Council members debated with city sanitation director Veronica White about the wording of regulations in the City Sanitation Ordinance. Although the ordinance states that there will be “unlimited” debris removal, it is defined by an industry standard, not by a common understanding.

According to this standard, “unlimited” doesn’t actually mean unlimited – in this case, it means 10 cubic yards of properly contained material.

The city council committee agreed to the contract based on the stipulation of unlimited debris pickup, which as council president Arnie Fielkow put it, “is the Cadillac of waste management contracts.”

“This is storm-related debris,” White said. “There is a clause in the contract that activates emergency pickup. We do not have the funds to activate emergency pickup. When we put together the contract it was based upon a normal situation and a normal setting. We are not in a normal situation and a normal setting.” Before the hurricane, bulky waste meant construction debris, but now it means debris left from Katrina.

If constituents wish to have private debris collected, they can call the sanitation department and request next-day pickup – limited to 10 contained cubic yards of debris.

Some citizens aren’t satisfied with this modification.

“As a homeowner, we were told this was a state-of-the-art contract,” said Cynthia Taylor, a New Orleans resident. “My neighbor and I can no longer share an alley because the garbage cans are so big, but they won’t take my debris unless I call them? The citizens of New Orleans deserve what they are paying for and what the contract states is unlimited debris pickup.”

Cynthia Willard-Lewis, councilwoman and chairperson of the sanitation committee, confirmed that citizens are no longer reporting complaints about the presence of debris scattered around the city. There are still complaints about piled-up curbside debris, however, which is interpreted by the committee to be a result of the limited debris pickup.

Steven O’Connor of Phoenix Recycling expressed the need for New Orleans to make a fundamental change in how it deals with waste. He believes, based on his customers’ willingness to pay for services, that they will support his belief that there needs to be a change in local waste management.

At this point, he sees waste management as insufficient due to separate contracts for garbage pickup and recycling pickup.

O’Connor requested the adoption of a comprehensive solid waste management program from the council that would merge garbage and recycling pickup and force institutions and citizens to take responsibility for their waste.

“A waste management program is nothing new to invent. We have to give people the incentive to reduce what they use, reuse it and recycle it when it’s done,” O’Connor said.

Leslie March is a chairwoman of the Sierra Club’s Louisiana chapter and a member of the Green Zone Task Force. March and the organizations she is involved in look for alternatives to landfill dumping, and she said recycling is one of the best preventions for landfills.

To combat the immediate recycling concern, March implored Council members to readmit the blue bins on the streets that used to hold recycling before the hurricane.

“If people get out of the habit of recycling, it is hard to get them back into it,” March said.

March added that City Hall’s temporary solution of having residents transport their recycling to a designated location once a month is unrealistic and restrictive in that many New Orleans residents don’t have means of transportation or the storage space for these items.

Barry Cole, a member of the Central Carrollton Association, agreed with March that the blue recycling bins should be reinstated because “it’s a signal that we are getting back to normal.” He also suggested Orleans Parish should partner with Jefferson Parish’s recycling program to reduce the expense of a new program for New Orleans.

White recognizes the importance of recycling and the immediate local need for it, but also the principal interference: lack of funds. “If we get the money, we can reinstate tomorrow – we just need the money,” Whitesaid.

Jessica Camp, history senior and member of the Loyola University Community Action Program, said she attended the meeting because “it’s ridiculous to even have to question bringing recycling back. I don’t think it was taken as seriously as the debris issue. They say they’ll do it in 2008, but it probably won’t be until 2009.

“I understand that there are financial matters, but when you think about the costs that are going to be offset by having to pay landfill fees it’s just ridiculous to even think twice about it,” she said.

Sally Tunmer can be reached at [email protected].