By Gina Tabonares
Variety News Staff

MEMBERS of the Solid Waste Law Review Commission yesterday started drafting legislation that will create a Solid Waste Management Division as an independent public corporation.
An earlier recommendation was to have the new corporation subject to the Consolidated Commission on Utilities, but a consensus among LRC members was to make the division a new independent authority.
The creation of a Solid Waste Management Division as a public corporation was part of the recommendation of U.S. Magistrate Judge Joaquin Manibusan, who gave the commission 60 days to propose legislation creating the division.
Under the court proposal, the legislation must also empower and authorize the new public corporation to secure revenue bond financing for consent decree capital projects.
Within 90 days from its creation, the new public corporation is to file with the Public Utilities Commission a plan for implementing a proposal to procure the services of a company to collect residential waste, to either privatize its billing and collection, or establish a protocol with the Guam Power Authority which would undertake responsibility and restructure its business relationship with commercial haulers.
U.S. government representatives who monitor local government compliance with a consent decree to close the Ordot Dump and build a new landfill suggested the creation of a public corporation to address solid waste problems on Guam.
They suggested that the new corporation be given the power of eminent domain and the authority and responsibility for procurement in all capital projects required by the consent decree, and impose direct tipping fees on commercial haulers.
They also recommended that the new corporation be authorized to prosecute and defend against litigation with its own counsel and should privatize residential trash collection.
PUC and the Office of the Public Auditor earlier agreed to the rationale to convert the Solid Waste Management Division into a separate public corporation to accurately determine the total costs to operate a waste management system such as the collection and disposal of solid waste, the closure of the Ordot Dump, and the development of a sanitary landfill.
Public works director Larry Perez told the court and the commission that the Department of Public Works has already outsourced its residential billing process and the billings to private trash haulers have been transferred to the Department of Administration.
“This will eliminate past problems resulting from having two separate government agencies involved in the billing process,” Perez said.
He also told the commission that it has started the process of procuring the services of a private company to do the residential trash collection currently being done by DPW.
Perez said he supports the plan to create a new public corporation but suggested that it not be put under CCU.
The members of the Solid Waste Law Review Commission will meet again on Wednesday to continue its work on legislative measures. They are also getting ready to answer the court’s inquiries related to the status hearing request of the U.S. government to check GovGuam’s progress in complying with the consent decree.