By Joseph Edgerton
Staff Writer

For the second time in as many weeks, Pembroke selectmen met to discuss changing fees charged to waste haulers, which are among the lowest in the region.

Pembroke is one of a few towns in a cooperative founded in 1985 with the goal of ensuring competitive waste disposal rates at the Penacook incinerator. Every co-op town pays a flat rate of $38.65 per ton of commercial waste to the incinerator, and charges commercial haulers another fee. Pembroke charges commercial haulers just $41 per ton, whereas other towns charge varying fees, up to $54.50.

The $2.35 between the flat rate and the amount charged to commercial haulers is used to cover administrative fees associated with trash disposal.

Town Administrator Troy Brown said the selectmen are trying to achieve a balance between the businesses in town and the the commercial haulers.

"One of the concerns of the selectmen is that they don't want business owner's costs to increase," he said. "If we increase the fee that we're charging commercial haulers, it's possible the businesses will have to pay more. On the other hand, if we charge too little, there's an incentive to charge commingled waste to Pembroke."

On Oct. 25, the board determined that the only way to figure out exactly how much commercial waste Pembroke is generating is to ask the operator of each trash-compacting truck for a detailed report from the measuring scale built into each truck.

The scale at the incinerator weighs the trucks, but cannot tell whether the trash is from one town or is a combination. Jim Nocella, a public sector service manager for Waste Management, said that some of the trucks may not have the scales, but are equipped with an I'd. indicating which communities the truck can service.

"I don't know if our trucks in Pembroke have scales," he said. "The scales are very labor intensive, and I would call the technology behind them only semi-reliable. They're subjected to a lot of jarring and impact when dumpsters are emptied."

Nocella also said there are strict regulations about mixing trash.

"The safeguards are fairly intense on the co-op's side," he said. "Co-op administrators and town officials can look at the historical trends and notice a spike in dumping. If there's a spike, they can call the facility. The facility can randomly or specifically pick out a truck and search its contents."

According to Nocella, an increase in trash tonnage would be immediately noticeable to coop town officials or administrators.

Jim Presher, director of the trash co-op, said there are other ways of checking whether an operator is being honest.

"In the last three years, some of the communities actually followed a truck," he said. "The last community to do this was Bristol. In one case there was mixing of trash, and in another case, there wasn't."

Presher also said that the scales at the incinerator don't track mixing between communities, and that technically, communities aren't supposed to mix trash.

"I suspect that there is very little load mixing going on between towns," he said. "We require that towns do not mix their loads, but two towns can agree to mix."

Brown said leaving the cooperative to save money is out of the question, and would prove far more costly than the agreement the town has with the incinerator, which is due to expire in 2014.

"Going it alone really wouldn't make any sense," he said. "You'd be paying the spot market price, which is as high as $80 a ton."

At the Oct. 25 meeting, selectmen came to the conclusion that it would most likely be easier to monitor the weight of each truck as opposed to actually increasing tipping fees, but the change is still up for discussion.

Selectman Daniel Crean proposed the idea.

"Instead of raising the tipping fee and raising the cost to businesses in town, they're (the truck drivers) going to have to provide us with a printed record."

Crean called for legislation that would make the commercial haulers provide a log of activity in addition to the calculated weight of the truck.

"I don't want what they report (to the incinerator)," he said. "I want their logs."

Selectmen plan to meet Nov. 3 to discuss the wording of the legislation and additional statistics about tipping fees.