County to replace Red River Service with local BFI

BROWNSVILLE - Cameron County commissioners voted Tuesday to replace embattled Red River Service Corp. with Allied Waste Services, doing business locally as BFI, to pick up trash and brush in rural areas through a county contract.

Customers will get a 96-gallon wheeled container similar to what they have now and receive weekly trash pickup, County Administrator Pete Sepulveda said. They will receive brush and bulky item pickup once a month, he said.

Jon M. Deicla, general manager of Allied Waste Services, said BFI presently has an office in Brownsville, but will have its main local office in Harlingen by the time service begins Sept. 1.

Red River, which was the first company to work under the county's mandatory rural trash collection program, began service in the fall of 2006. But company officials said it was never able to operate profitably because the county had no legal means to require customers to pay for service.

Red River notified the county last month it will pull out of the contract by Aug. 31.

Rural residents flooded county offices and the Valley Morning Star newsroom with complaints that Red River's service was unreliable, especially brush collection. Customers told the Star that it was difficult to reach the company at its Los Fresnos office by telephone.

That office was recently closed and customers have since said they had even more trouble reaching the company's office, which had been moved to its shop north of Los Fresnos.

Calls were later diverted to Red River's Austin office, but customers continued to express difficulty dealing with the company.

The county trash pickup system, set up by former County Judge Gilberto Hinojosa's administration in 2006, at first tried to rely on rural water districts to collect trash collection fees. The system soon learned that water districts would not shut off water service for non-payment of trash collection fees and some water districts refused to collect the fees.

The county also tried to have fees collected by county tax offices.

Some conflicts with Red River ended in district court and the county eventually turned over collection of fees to Red River. The county was eventually forced to allow rural residents who had contracts or agreements with other trash collection companies to continue using those services.

Richard Burst, lead attorney for the county's Civil Legal Division, said last week he is still sorting through issues such as Red River's claim it will continue serving its customers who wish to keep its service after BFI takes over. It is the county's stance that all rural residents must use the company contracted to the county, he said.

Deicla said customers should not try to call his company to sign up until advertisements are placed in local newspapers later this summer, but that rural residents will get plenty of notice how to sign up, what telephone numbers to use and other details.

"We have to get our equipment in place," he said. Customers will have ample time to sign up and locations of offices and telephone numbers will be widely publicized, he said.

BFI will use its landfill at Donna or the Brownsville city landfill, depending on distance from customers, Deicla said.

County commissioners asked that all information about the new trash and brush pickup service be advertised in every local newspapers and shopper paper in the county and that fliers also be delivered to every rural address.

County Judge Carlos Cascos told Deicla, "I know it will cost you something, but you need to publicize this in every possible news outlet. Believe me, it will be worth it."