Early MOSA exit eyed

By Tom Grace
Cooperstown News Bureau

August 04, 2008 04:00 am

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MOSA's member counties may try to withdraw from the solid-waste authority before the end of 2010, according to James Powers, Otsego County board chairman.

Friday morning, Powers said the topic is likely to be discussed during a meeting Aug. 13 at the Schoharie County Office Building in the village of Schoharie.

Staff and board members of the Montgomery Otsego Schoharie Solid Waste Management Authority, as well as representatives of its three member counties, are expected to attend, he said.

``This isn't a sure thing, but we've been discussing the possibility of getting out before MOSA has to renew its contract with Riccelli (a Syracuse-based trucking firm) in 2010,'' said Powers.

MOSA was formed in 1989, and a service contract binding its three member counties is not scheduled to expire until 2014. However, if all three county boards wanted to pull the plug sooner, they might be able to, Powers said.

MOSA collects rubbish from the three-county area and has retained Riccelli Enterprises Inc. to truck it to landfills in Monroe and Ontario counties, some 200 miles away. The five-year contract with Riccelli, which allows for increases when fuel costs rise, is slated to expire at the end of 2010.

``I've been told by Hans Arnold (executive director of the Oneida-Herkimer Solid Waste Authority) that if we're going to get out, we should do it before renewing that contract,'' said Powers.

Toward that end, the county plans to hire a consultant to lead the way out of its troubled solid-waste partnership.

Terry Bliss, Otsego County's planning director and solid waste coordinator, said a request for proposals from consultants will soon be sent out.

``We had been thinking this would address the possible post-MOSA world of 2014, but we may be looking at 2010, now,'' said Bliss.

The possibility of early dissolution was discussed at recent meetings of legislators from Schoharie, Montgomery and Otsego counties, said Powers.

According to Philip Skowfoe Jr., a veteran Schoharie County board member and a new MOSA board member, the meetings were scheduled with the opposite intention.

``I helped organize them, because we want to make MOSA more user-friendly,'' he said Friday.

By the end of the second meeting, though, some were talking of dissolving.

Skowfoe said the Authority's biggest problem is its tipping fee _ the price it charges for receiving and delivering solid waste.

``We're at $104.50-a-ton now, and that's not competitive,'' he said.

By comparison, the Utica-based Oneida-Herkimer Solid Waste Authority charges $72.15 per ton.

As a result of MOSA's high price, caused by high transportation costs and substantial debt service, member counties continually have to subsidize the tipping fee, or haulers would go elsewhere.

Gilbert Chichester, MOSA's executive director, noted Friday that MOSA is far smaller than O-H and does not have its own landfill, making for a poor comparison.

Olga Podmajersky, of Fultonville in Montgomery County, vice chair of MOSA's board, said she had not been told that dissolution is likely to be discussed Aug. 13.

``It would be a very complicated process,'' she said, noting that state approval would be necessary.

A plan for paying MOSA's debt, more than $12 million at the start of 2008, would have to be worked out, she noted.

Another issue would be who would oversee the two closed landfills in Montgomery County that MOSA used in its first years. Currently, the Authority is charged with monitoring those sites well into the future, said Powers.

``This isn't going to be easy, and that's why we need professional help,'' he said.

The county will have to develop a solid-waste plan, he said, and without a landfill of its own, find a place to send the rubbish.