Tara Kearsey
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Aug 04/00) - The City of Whitehorse is finding much success by contracting out its waste management services.

The City of Yellowknife has budgeted almost $1.1 million for waste collection, processing and recycling expenses, while the City of Whitehorse spends only $945,000 in contracting out its waste management services. Whitehorse's population is 22,984 people while Yellowknife's population remains at just over 18,000 people.

Whitehorse has divided its landfill operations into five different contracts -- operation of the landfill, gatehouse operations, transfer station, curbside collection and composting and recycling.

The curbside collection, transfer station and gatehouse contracts were tendered out for the first time this year, said Wayne Tuck, Whitehorse city engineer.

"What it was before was basically one contract tendered out for the landfill operations, and as an aside they offered a service to do some composting and recycling ... and they would also operate the gatehouse where they directed the people to the various landfills," said Tuck.

But since then, he said the City of Whitehorse has implemented tipping fees, brought in waste scales, and tendered out all the separate contracts.

"We felt that we wanted more control on the operation of the gatehouse and we didn't want it affiliated with the operation of the landfill itself, so that's why we tendered all these contracts separately," he said.

The Whitehorse landfill site has been tendered out to contractors for at least 10 years.

Although Tuck was not employed with the City of Whitehorse back then, he said he believes waste management in the city was becoming too large a job to handle. It was also believed the private sector could service the public more effectively, he said.

Tuck said contracting out the waste management services "shows that we can offer the best service to the citizens for the cheapest cost."

The operation of the landfill contract was awarded for $240,000 per year; the transfer station contract is $140,000 per year; the gatehouse contract is also $140,000; the composting and recycling contract is $75,000 and the curbside collection contract is $350,000.

However, the tendering out of five separate contracts does have its disadvantages.

"One of the things with having so many contracts is it requires a little bit more co-ordination time. It just happens that we have five different contracts and five different contractors," said Tuck.

In the 2000 Budget, The City of Yellowknife has cited waste collection costs at $512,000 per year, waste processing at $435,000 per year, and waste recycling at $137,000 per year.