Augusta officials are defending the proposed switch to weekly trash pickup as necessary to keep costs down and encourage recycling.
The move, approved twice by an Augusta Commission committee but not yet by the full commission, comes after a dozen years of semiweekly trash collection with weekly recycling pickup.
Both services are underutilized, according to Environmental Services Director Mark Johnson.
For the second weekly trash run, which costs the city about $2 million a year, “if you look at the tonnage on the second day of collecting, it’s lower,” Johnson said.
In addition, the city pays $1.4 million annually for its recycling program, which is used by only 20 percent of about 62,000 customer households, he said.
Johnson has pushed to revamp the service since before the collection contract ran out in 2010. After two one-year extensions, Augusta has been on a month-to-month contract with several waste haulers since January.
