Haywood extends financial olive branch to towns for trash hauling

Haywood County will help ease the burden faced by towns as they start trucking their trash all the way to the county’s far-flung landfill.

County commissioners will allocate more than $100,000 to towns to help cover the added cost of the trash journey, from more trash workers to extra trash trucks. Starting this summer, the county will no longer allow towns and commercial trash services to bring their loads to a mid-point trash transfer station in Clyde and instead will make them go all the way to the White Oak landfill, an extra hour or more roundtrip.

During a public hearing on the county budget this week, commissioners made a point to highlight the county’s contribution to towns’ trash operations.

The county will save hundreds of thousands by closing the transfer station to town and commercial trash trucks but will share some of those savings back with the towns to offset the burden and ideally prevented town residents trash rates from going up.

The county will pay the towns of Waynesville, Canton and Clyde $15 for each household that they pick up garbage from.

“All of them were very supportive of that funding formula,” said County Manager Marty Stamey.

Clyde will receive $7,500; Canton will get $23,700; and Waynesville will be allocated $80,670.

The goal of the money is to prevent towns from having to pass the buck onto their residents. Canton and Clyde have committed to not raising their rates.

“The whole concept of this was to alleviate the burden on those citizens,” Stamey said.

However, Waynesville is still recommending a rate increase, though the amount is unknown.

“What the county is offering us doesn’t come anywhere close to what the additional costs will be,” said former Town Manager Lee Galloway, who is acting as a consultant for the town until July. The estimated cost of hauling its own trash to White Oak is $160,000.

Galloway added that the town appreciates the money that the county is able to provide.

The county hopes the contribution will be an annual allocation, according Stamey.

The county already subsidizes the trash journey to White Oak for county residents who don’t live inside the town limits. County residents without town trash pick-up drop their garbage at dumpster lots located in communities throughout the county. The county then pays to have it trucked to White Oak.

Maggie won’t see any assistance, because for it, the White Oak landfill isn’t any further than the transfer station in Clyde.

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