The interim Solid Waste Department director described the difficulties with regular recycling pickup in some neighborhoods.
HOUSTON — Months into his new job, Solid Waste Management Director Larius Hassen told Houston City Council he inherited a department rife with issues impacting service, though he is determined to fix them.
Hassen presented a report to City Council Wednesday, following months of complaints by residents and council members over delayed recycling collection throughout the city. KHOU 11 spoke with residents over the course of weeks, learning of green recycling bins sitting in front of driveways for weeks, sometimes for more than a month. Solid Waste currently says the department is three days behind schedule for recycling collection.
“It’s been a trying ninety days, to say the least,” Hassen said.
The interim director laid out the various issues at the department that have impacted recycling collection service and beyond.
Those issues included alleged mismanagement of department funds for which some incidents were referred to the Office of Inspector General.
Another challenge was a loss of 30 employees who retired this year as part of a city-wide program by the Whitmire administration to make all departments more efficient and address a budget deficit. Hassen told council members he has since been able to reorganize staffing in order to make the department as efficient or at times more efficient than in the past.
Old routing software has also slowed operations for truck drivers as Hassen says maps in that software has not been updated in a decade. He says plans are in the works to update those maps and have them in the hands of drivers soon.
One of the major issues is an aging fleet. Hassen said the total fleet is about 218 trucks. But on a daily basis, there are typically about 30 trucks that are down for maintenance with additional 20 that typically leave the yard and break down on their route.
On top of that, rats are often culprits for bringing down the massive blue trucks.
“When you don’t clean out your trucks, rodents come in and rats are chewing the wires in the trucks,” Hassen told council members.
Hassen said the department is expecting nine new trucks to be ready to go in October — the first set of an overall purchase of 30 new trucks.
The department is also grappling with a challenge KHOU 11 has reported on previously: the city only has one location for trucks to drop off recycling for processing. That has led to long wait times of up to an hour at the FCC Environmental Services facility in East Houston. Hassen says a truck operating in the western part of the city can spend up to three hours driving to the FCC facility, wait there, drop off recycling and then return to its route.
Hassen said the department is exploring opening two transfer stations operated by the city that will help truck drivers spend more time in neighborhoods collecting green bins.
“Run the transfer stations ourselves, we can ensure that our trucks get in and get out,” Hassen told KHOU 11. “Because the main objective is for us to get our trucks back into our residents’ neighborhood to pick up trash and recycling at the time that we say we’re going to do it.”
Hassen also said he is working on improving customer service as well as developing technology for residents to be able to track trucks along their routes via an app.
Council members were supportive of Hassen’s wider plans to improve overall department service but highlighted the urgency to address the current recycling delays.
“In District A, recycling was over two months behind and now it was collected and now we’re behind again,” District A Council Member Amy Peck told Hassen.
Hassen said anyone still waiting for recycling to be collected, to keep their green bins out as he promises trucks are set to soon collect them and get back on schedule.