Long lines, missing decals as Beaufort Co. rolls out new trash dump system. What’s next?
When Doris Dillard applied for a trash dump decal in early November, she expected she’d get it in the mail in a few weeks at most.
Two months later, she still hasn’t received it.
She’s used Beaufort County’s convenience center on St. Helena to drop off her trash and recycling once a week for years. But the county’s new decal requirement has taken away some of the convenience.
Without a decal in hand, Dillard has been using an online confirmation form to access the site. She said she thinks Beaufort County should’ve been more proactive when implementing the new requirement and mailed decals to all county property owners.
“If they had mailed it out to all the property owners, they wouldn’t be having this problem,” she said.
The reaction to the county’s new decal system has been mixed. Some property owners, like Dillard, still haven’t received a decal after months of waiting. Others say the new system has led to long wait lines, reports of illegal dumping and, in one case, a shouting match between two people trying to dump their trash.
However, some property owners say they received their decal promptly and dropped off their trash and recycling with no problems. They say any minor issues with the sites are due to the county working out kinks in a new system.
Beaufort County began requiring decals at all county convenience centers with a “soft opening” on Jan. 2. The new system, which included closing the centers at Pritchardville in Bluffton and Gate in Beaufort, is part of the county’s attempt to curtail illegal dumping and cut costs at the trash dumps. For years officials have said the 25-year-old centers are too expensive to operate and lead to traffic, environmental and safety problems.
‘They could have done a lot better’
Two weeks into the new system, property owners across the county have reported issues ranging from not receiving a decal to long wait lines at the centers to decal scanners not working.
Dillard said she applied for a decal after learning about the new system from her hairstylist, but received no response from the county. Finally, she contacted a county employee who gave her a confirmation form that she printed off and keeps in her car to use at the dump until her decal arrives.
When she asked why it was taking so long to receive a decal, she was told the county was still processing about 10,000 new decals and was “behind.”
Dillard thinks that problem would have been alleviated if decals were sent to all county property owners who use the sites.
Hilton Head Island resident Ruthe Ritterbeck said she went to the island’s trash dump three times to drop off her recycling and eventually “gave up” due to the long wait line.
Ritterback said she’s now been dropping off her recycling first thing in the morning to avoid traffic. Even though she’s a property owner, Ritterback said the biggest problem with the county’s new program is that many people who rent apartments from a commercial company won’t be able to use the centers.
She also said the county has done a bad job of informing people about whether they need their decal scanned to drop off recycling. The centers in Bluffton and at Shanklin are allowing people to drop off recycling without a decal.
“They really did not think it through, the way they set it up,” she said. “I don’t think they thought out the whole process. Certainly for the Hilton Head facility, telling people what they can do and what they can’t do, they could have done a lot better.”
The new decal system
The county began implementing the new decal requirement earlier this month with a caveat that property owners wouldn’t be turned away at first for not having a decal.
The new requirement came after a January 2019 report from Abby Goldsmith, principal of Goldsmith Resources LLC, that found that the centers were getting too expensive to operate and led to safety problems.
The study emphasized that convenience centers are primarily used in more rural areas. Many residents within the town or city limits of Beaufort, Port Royal and Bluffton have curbside collection services, the report said.
Beaufort County officials have talked about limiting the centers for years. In November 2015, County Council announced that every household would use a curbside pickup system for trash and recycling by 2020. Though that plan never came to fruition, the county hopes the new decal system could alleviate some of the problems at the aging trash dumps.
Under the new system, property owners with decals are limited to no more than three visits per week.
Solid waste and recycling director Cindy Carter said the county estimates that about 97,000 households are eligible to use the convenience centers, but about 57,000 of those households already use a curbside service. She said she initially anticipated about 35,000 would apply for a decal.
As of Tuesday morning, she said, 35,800 people have applied for a decal. Most of those have already been sent out, but the county is still processing 1,800 applications, she said.
The delay in issuing those 1,800 decals is due to “a lot of hands-on work,” because of issues with the applications, including incorrect information, heirs property or missing information.
Carter said some sites have experienced problems with decal scanners not working due to information not syncing in the system. However, she said, the county’s IT team has “gotten all of those bugs worked out.”
She said long wait lines can be attributed to people stopping at the sites to ask questions about the new program. She said she hopes that can be alleviated as the system continues.
Beaufort County has created a question-and-answer form on its solid waste and recycling website to help people better understand the new system and allow people to apply for another decal if they still haven’t received one.
Carter said the center in Bluffton and the Shanklin center in Beaufort are allowing people to drop off their recycling without a decal.
According to the county’s new website, people who rent property from a person and not a commercial business need to reach out to their property owner to receive a decal.
The website states that commercial businesses that own apartment complexes are “responsible for providing trash disposal.” According to the website, people that live at apartment complexes can take large items to the Oakwood Landfill in Jasper County.
In an email to the newspapers earlier this month, Assistant Administrator Jared Fralix said the county understands “some of the hardships along the way as we roll-out a new program.
“The goal of the decal system,” he wrote, “is to eliminate the users who should not be using the centers (ie – contractors and out-of-towners) such that Beaufort County residents don’t pay the cost of disposal for those illicit users.”
