Columbus' free yard-waste pickup resumes today

clipped from www.dispatchpolitics.com Paid service little-used, so where did leaves go? Sunday, April 18, 2010 2:59 AM By Mark Ferenchik THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH For many Columbus residents pulling weeds, twigs and leaves from flower beds and yards, the resumption of free curbside yard-waste pickup heralds a chorus of hallelujahs. Steve Panico of North Linden paid for weekly curbside yard-waste pickup. Yard waste sits in Rader Alley in German Village last week. After the city stopped paying for yard-waste pickup, only about 13,000 households paid a fee to get six months of service. "Oh, my God, yes," said Steve Panico, a North Linden resident who spends up to 15 hours a week this time of year tending his flowerbeds, trees and yard. He's the kind of guy who spreads 100 bags of mulch each year. "When I cut the grass, I'm always bagging it," he said. "I just think the convenience for me to put it out there is huge." Starting Monday, the city will resume weekly yard-waste pickup for 227,000 households.

To save money, the city cut the service 14 months ago and left residents with a choice. They could pay $49.50 every six months for what had been a free city service, or haul their yard waste to free drop-off centers across the city.

About 13,000 households paid the fee. Panico's was one of them. And the drop-off sites didn't notice much of an uptick.

So what about the tens of thousands of other residents? Some were bad. Very bad.

"It was discouraging to see people put (yard waste) in the garbage can," said Panico's neighbor, Christine Gale.

Jen Miller was discouraged, too. "I bet a lot of people threw it in their regular trash. That's what I witnessed in German Village," said Miller, conservation coordinator for the Ohio Sierra Club.

After Christmas, many people tossed their trees onto their curbs. Two Christmas trees were tossed by the exit ramp of I-71 at E. North Broadway and sat there for months.

The Environmental Crimes Task Force of Central Ohio - the Nail-A-Dumper folks - received 128 complaints of illegal dumping between March 2009 and last month, compared with 89 in the previous 12 months.

The Franklin County Landfill saw a slight increase in yard waste hauled in by city garbage trucks, said John Remy, a spokesman for the Solid Waste Authority of Central Ohio.

And there was a "noticeable" increase in storm-sewer blockages in the past year, said city utilities spokesman George Zonders.

Dumping in ravines? "We have had a little bit of that," said Christopher O'Leary, who lives near Glen Echo Ravine in the University District and is a member of Friends of the Ravines. "Even when there was leaf pickup, we would have people dumping."

Many residents were angry that the city didn't restart yard-waste pickup after voters passed a 0.5 percentage-point income-tax hike in August. But the city didn't start collecting the new tax money until October, and a one-year contract for the fee-based service with Rumpke didn't end until this month.

Rumpke is happy that it can collect from all households again.

That's because the company stands to be paid close to $3.7 million by the city this year, thanks to a new three-year deal that the City Council approved in February.

Rumpke took a financial hit in the past 12 months, when it was paid only $1million.

In fact, Rumpke dumped 43 percent less yard waste at Kurtz Bros. last year than in 2008. And residential drop-offs remained about the same, said Kurtz Bros. manager Jeff Stemler.

That tells him one thing.

"People found other ways" of disposing of yard waste, he said.

mferenchik@dispatch.com