By Gina Tabonares
Variety News Staff

While the United States applies pressure to enforce the consent decree deadlines, GovGuam agencies are still wrangling about how to handle the island’s solid waste operations.
The inability of the Department of Public Works’ Solid Waste Division to effectively collect garbage tipping fees prompted the Public Utilities Commission to recommend the creation of a public corporation.
In a Feb. 1, 2007 order, PUC commissioners suggested to the District Court to direct GovGuam—within 60 days—to enact legislation that will reconstitute Solid Waste Management as a public corporation under the oversight of the Consolidated Commission on Utilities.
According to PUC, the creation of a public corporation would ensure consent decree compliance, by consolidating the governing authority in a single commission.
PUC said CCU has proven its ability to secure the revenue bond financing and has in place a seasoned team of managers who could be tasked with overseeing the performance of the tasks recommended in the order.
DPW director Larry Perez and the Office of the Governor, however, disagreed with PUC’s recommendation, saying that this approach would divest the Executive Branch of all control over solid waste operations and result in further delays while the new personnel come up to speed.
He said this would also terminate the Camacho administration’s ability to ensure compliance with the consent decree.
According to the declaration submitted by Perez to the court, GovGuam is in the process of contracting out the Ordot Dump closure, the construction and operation of Layon landfill, as well as residential trash collections, and therefore, the creation of a public corporation will no longer be needed.
“By year 2011, most of the solid waste operations activities will be conducted by private entities with government oversight through contract management, therefore it will be essentially unnecessary,” DPW counsel Helen Kennedy said.
To prove that they are doing their job in collecting the garbage tipping fees, DPW said the collection rate from large commercial haulers generally exceeds 90 percent with a cumulative sum of less than $500,000 collectibles as of Feb. 13, 2007 based on the billings that are more than 120 days old.
Perez said the Office of the Public Auditor is currently reviewing the accounts of the five commercial haulers to assist the government in its decision regarding the amounts that are collectible.
“Until the auditor’s report is completed and reviewed and final amounts owing are determined, neither the government nor the court can determine if 50 percent or 75 percent of these arrearages have been collected,” Kennedy said.
DPW said most of the 2006 collection rate from its registered residential customers has been greater than 50 percent.
DPW, however, admitted that it’s not comfortable that the residential fee collection rate can increase to 75 percent by May 31, 2007 because it has limited staff to work on correcting the database and the billing process is fragmented between the database of the Guam Waterworks Authority and DPW.
The department also complained about its continued struggle with freeloaders who do not pay for garbage collection or disposal.
Examples of freeloaders, according to DPW, are customers who register but refuse to pay, customers who use the disposal containers of neighbors, businesses, mayors, parks or other government facilities, and those who illegally burn their garbage or dump it on the ground.
In response to federal agency moves to enforce the consent decree, GovGuam insisted that the consent decree deadlines are no longer workable and the federal court should modify the interim deadlines to make it realistic and not burdensome on the local government.
GovGuam counsel said the federal agencies’ motion does not provide appropriate solutions, but only seeks to impose additional requirements on local government which are either “overly burdensome or overly intrusive.”
The U.S. Department of Justice, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Attorney’s Office earlier asked the District Court of Guam not to extend the 2007 deadlines to close the Ordot Dump and open a new landfill. They said the closure of the Ordot Dump is necessary to eliminate serious health and environment hazards.