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December 22, 2009

Reps to Otsego: Leave MOSA

By Tom Grace
Cooperstown News Bureau

Otsego County’s Administration Committee unanimously voted Monday to advise the county to get out of the Montgomery- Otsego-Schoharie Solid Waste Management Authority.

Administration Committee Chairman Rep. James Johnson, R-Otsego, said he believes the matter will be considered by the county board early next year.

MOSA, which does not own operating landfills, contracts with Ricelli Enterprises Inc. of Syracuse to transport and dispose of waste left by local haulers at MOSA’s transfer stations.

The contract is set to expire at the end of 2010, Johnson said, so in the coming months, MOSA will be soliciting bids for new contracts.

``The committee believes the county should also look at what would be available for us if we decide to go on our own,’’ he said. ``If we’re going to get out of MOSA, we really have (to) get going on this.’’

While the motion puts the county’s most powerful committee on record, the recommendation is not slated to come to a vote by the full board, board Clerk-Auditor Laura Child said.

To come to a binding board vote, the resolution would have to come from the county’s Solid Waste & Environmental Concerns Committee, she noted.

Johnson said the Administration Committee also wants to put MOSA on notice that in soliciting transportation and disposal proposals, it should inquire what would be available if Otsego County were no longer a member.

Administration Committee member Rep.

Richard Murphy, DOneonta, said he supported the motion because he wants the county board to analyze whether it would be better off in or out of MOSA.

If Otsego County leaves MOSA, it will have to answer questions such as whether to handle recyclables itself or continue to contract for this service, and whether to have waste from the northern and southern transfer stations go to the same landfill, Murphy said.

Recently, MOSA Executive Director Dennis Heaton said MOSA also will look at proposals to truck waste from its transfer stations to separate landfills.

The 25-year contract that binds MOSA’s members together expires in 2014. According to Hans Arnold, a consultant to all three MOSA members, a county may withdraw early as long as certain conditions are met. A primary one is guaranteeing to the state Department of Environmental Conservation that landfills MOSA has used will be monitored and, if need be, remediated well into the future.

All three counties have agreed to this, with the Otsego County Board voting in early December to pay for 40 percent of these expenses. Monday’s vote advising Otsego County to exit MOSA comes in the same month as MOSA’s board voted to defease, or guarantee, about $10 million in debt, a move that will allow the authority to lower its tipping fee by about $20 per ton to about $86 per ton next month.

This, coupled with county subsidies, should make MOSA more competitive and may help the counties’ bottom lines.

Still, in the more than two decades MOSA has been operating, there have been more downs than ups, Johnson noted.

``At the meeting, as we were talking about getting out of MOSA, someone made the comment that this vote had been 20 years in the making,’’ Johnson said.

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