Shelby Co. residents still without garbage pickup; Day 15

SHELBY CO., Ala. (WBRC) - New frustrations today from Shelby County homeowners who have gone more than 2 weeks without anyone picking up their garbage.

Shelby County homeowners we spoke to say they’re glad we’re trying to get answers for them, because they still haven’t heard from the county.

Back in early August, the county notified them that republic services did not want to renew it’s contract.

Trey Gauntt with Shelby County said the county then had to get bids from new contractors and those first bids came back very high.

“179 percent increase and so we went back out to bid the second time separating the recycle out of that and we had no bids for recycle,” Gauntt said. “The garbage collection component still went up 60 percent because of inflation, things like fuel and labor.”

This then led to a change with waste management taking over as the new garbage collection service provider, they started their services October 3

Shelby County Resident Hanna Martin said she was never notified of the switch in companies.

“Not one email, not one phone call stating that we would be switching to another company, that we would be losing our services which is the recycle portion,” Martin said.

Now more than two weeks into the switch Martin and many of her neighbors have still not had their garbage collected.

“Every time one of us calls its “there will be someone out there today,” “there will be someone out there today,” Martin said, “And I called a couple of days ago and the people you get they are the kind workers who are doing their job, it’s not under their control, its management and management are not doing anything.”

Martin says it’s becoming a sanitary issue and she has requested for a refund but is continuing to get billed for the service.

County leaders continuing to say they think all of this garbage pick-up will be caught up by next week and Waste Management said they are sending extra personnel to help with this transition.

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