Jefferson County Solid Waste wants to double fees for those who “self-haul” (take their trash to the transfer station).

At the Board of County Commissioners’ meeting on April 17, Solid Waste recommended doubling the minimum fee from $10 to $20. The flat-rate weight allowed for the minimum fee would also double from 120 pounds to 240 pounds but who has room in their car for anything close to that much? Not me, and not anyone else who doesn’t have a trailer or a pickup truck.

The proposed fee increase is highly regressive, hitting hardest those who can least afford it.

To “prove” that their recommendation to increase fees is justifiable, Solid Waste staff cherry-picked some numbers that included King County, Snohomish County, and Kitsap County in their chart of average “regional” rates. A more honest comparison, using just the four Olympic Peninsula counties, shows that Jefferson County’s current $10 fee is only $2.50 less than the average of its peers.

Solid Waste’s scheme also proposes to increase the per-ton rate for larger loads by 2.5 percent per year, every year. At $162.93, Jefferson County already charges the sixth-highest rate of all counties in our state, and far more than comparable rural counties. Statewide, only San Juan, Clallam, Skamania, Ferry, and Pierce charge more per ton. Jefferson County Solid Waste seems to be operating much less efficiently than 30-plus other counties.

Self-haul users account for 45 percent of transactions. Public records show that the 1,832 self-haul users who paid the minimum fee in March hauled an average of 74.8 pounds. Those minimum-fee self-haulers paid the equivalent of $267 per ton. Doubling the minimum fee to $20 would raise that to a whopping $534 per ton for those same small self-haul loads.

Solid Waste believes that by doubling the minimum fee they can persuade people to make fewer trips with larger average loads, thus reducing the cost per ton. While fewer trips will help reduce CO2 emissions, that will be irrelevant in a few years when electric cars and trucks will be the norm.

This attempt at social engineering is both offensive and potentially dangerous.

Forcing (“encouraging”) people to accumulate and store their garbage for weeks longer between trips will create public health hazards from increased pollution and vermin.

Rotting garbage will also produce all kinds of harmful emissions, including methane, which is 80 times more polluting than CO2.

Worse, the more unaffordable self-haul becomes, the more people will just throw their trash into the woods.

Speak up, contact your county commissioner, and stop Solid Waste from imposing their extreme fee increase.

Tom Thiersch

JEFFERSON COUNTY