Haven't seen much buzz on this topic, and don't know who's behind Orange County Voice, but there's a group in rural Orange passing out information that Orange county is considering what could be some pretty radical changes in the way trash is handled for non-incorporated residents. If this is true, rural residents really need to voice their opinions and concerns.
Intro here: http://www.orangecountyvoice.org/hottopics/trashrecycling.html
Survey here: http://survey.constantcontact.com/survey/a07e2ldhrm4g0elgsyr/a01fjg0x4knqh/questions
My concerns:
Any higher bar to entry to rural residents getting rid of trash will be an environmental disaster. The proposal for fees to toss garbage will be met with those who will simply revert to using the woods, the road ditches or their neighbor's properties as dumping grounds. Seriously, even a dollar or two per bag would have the impact of making this a much trashier county.
Curbside pickup does not seem feasible to me given just how rural and remote many county residents in the northern part of the county are. And my particular beef with this is that for those with really long dirt driveways, if they have to load their trash and haul it down to the non-existant curb, will they? Or is it simply more convenient to haul the already loaded trash to a "convenience site" (aka "green box site") at a time that suits them?
Those of us in un-incorporated Orange already don't get any real benefit from living in Orange vs the surrounding counties other than geographical location. Charging us more for the ONE service that many of us use seems grossly unfair.
Finally, I can't see how manning and maintaining however many garbage trucks it would take to service all of rural Orange could possibly be more economical than manning the few remaining "convenience center" dropoff sites.
In any event, I'd suggest to any rural residents reading this that it's high time we made our opinions known to the powers that be on this issue.
Mike Swaim
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