I just noticed thi
s on the city’s web site:
“Trash and recycling collections will be suspended on Tuesday, January 27th. For residents whose collection day is Tuesday, your next collection day will be Tuesday, February 3rd.”
I thought when trash wasn’t picked up due to snow they just handled it like a holiday – i.e. trash pick-up gets delayed for a day all week. This policy is more like “let’s pretend it never happened”. Good thing its winter time, for people like me with a Tuesday pick-up, otherwise that trash would start stinking.
This Newton Patch story from last year would seem to indicate that this is a new policy.
That was the most startling part of the very long recorded message from City Hall.
Bogus!
It also said that if you have extra trash that won’t fit in your bin next Tuesday, you can put it curbside. That seems reasonable to me. I think they are predicting that the trash pickup will be very slow on Wednesday because of the snow, so cramming 4 days into 3 may not work this week.
Maybe I should clean out my garage! Two weeks of trash! And I can put out extra.
The message was very long.
I can’t imagine the WM trucks could get onto my street on Wednesday if snow predictions are close to accurate.
Squirrels and raccoons will be very happy with this change. It’ll be like a week-long Super Bowl party.
Our trash pickup date is Tuesday, so we will also be waiting a full week for the trucks to show up. That said, I think it was a prudent decision to go on a worst case scenario and delay the Tuesday pickup until next week because we were less certain about how this storm would play out than we are now.
We’ve already had one very lucky break. This is a very dry snow. There is absolutely no snow buildup on any of the overhead wires on our street. I don’t want to jinx anything, but there’s less chance of widespread power outages from fallen wires in Newton, at least from heavy snow, than there has been closer to the coast where a more wintery mix is falling. But yesterday, at this time, we didn’t really know where the wet snow/dry snow line would fall.
In any event, the City was probably concerned that the cleanup could take more than a day and that snow removal equipment, utility repair crews, trash collection trucks and just plain motorists could be getting in each others way to the detriment of accomplishing any of the tasks expeditiously.
The extra bags on the curb mean that the driver has to come out and manually toss the bags into the truck since the mechanical arm cannot do it. So, either the route will take twice as long as usual or another man will need to be in the truck. Expensive?
I understand about garbage trucks being in the way of plows and utility trucks, but why not do the Tuesday pick up on Thursday and have everyone delayed TWO DAYS instead of a whole week.
Yes, it’s good it is cold, but I suspect all the coyotes will tell their cousins to come and tear those bags and see how far the inedible garbage can be spread!!!
Having the trash collection team work over the weekend to make up for a 2-day delay? Now THAT would be expensive!
Nobody is talking about trash pick-up during the weekend! Just having the Tuesday route on Thursday etc…
… and then the Wed. route on Fri. and then what? I think “etc.” has to mean the Thurs./Fri. routes on the weekend! In regular weather, they can cram 2 days into 1, but not with roads that are difficult to navigate, and people having to find a curbside spot to put their bins in all this snow.
Email from the city this afternoon says waste collection resumes on Thurs. The Wed route will be done on Thurs, Thurs on Fri, Fri on Sat, and Tue is skipped until next week. So they are working one weekend day (as on a holiday slide) and we Tuesday folk get to clean out our basements (as long as it’s bagged, they will take extra).
See: http://www.newtonma.gov/news/displaynews.asp?NewsID=563&TargetID=17
@BruceB – Sounds pretty reasonable given the exceptional circumstances
I received the message and thought it just said a day delay, just like a holiday. I always trust Aaron Goldman when he calls with info from the city!