San Antonio hasn’t had to negotiate a landfill agreement since 1995, but all three of its contracts are coming to an end next year.
As city leaders consider how San Antonio deals with its garbage for the first time in roughly three decades, the Solid Waste Management Department is striking one forward-looking option from the table.
South Carolina-based RePower South LLC, which currently operates two municipal waste management facilities aimed at turning solid waste into clean energy, put forward a proposal to take on San Antonio’s trash.
Due to questions about the company’s capacity and the unusual funding agreement it was proposing, Josephine Valencia, deputy director of the Solid Waste Management Department, told members of the City Council Wednesday the plan was not recommended by the city’s six-member evaluation committee.
RePower South has two active facilities — in Berkeley, South Carolina, and Montgomery, Alabama — where waste is collected in a single container and sorted to create new products, according to the company’s website. Recycled commodities are baled and sold, while non-recyclable papers and plastics are turned into fuel.
But both facilities handle volumes of waste that are smaller than what San Antonio generates, Valencia said. The city also already has separate contracts for its recycling.
“Even though we were intrigued by the concept, we thought it would be too risky to concentrate all our volume in one facility, especially since they were saying that they wanted all the tonnage,” Valencia said.
Unlike the current landfill contracts, none of the new ones being considered guarantee the vendor a minimum tonnage, meaning the city will still have the flexibility to adjust its approach even after they’re signed.
“If a new solution were to present itself, whether it’s RePower South or someone else, it could continue to be explored,” Valencia said
RePower South’s existing facilities have faced some financial challenges, leading the mayor of Montgomery to suggest the company lacked pragmatism about the reality of the costs.
In San Antonio, the company was pitching a different arrangement from how it operates with existing clients, Valencia said.
It hoped to extract potential recyclables and organics from the waste stream, then sell the fuel it generated in the open market and share the revenue with the city. A portion of the waste would still have to be landfilled.
“It was very difficult to evaluate [their proposal],” Valencia said. “I believe their long-term theoretical goal was to try to be a landfill alternative, but from their own proposal, they were saying they don’t have the technology to do that.”
RePower South did not respond to a request for comment.
After Valencia took questions from the council, several members expressed interest in continuing to look for innovative landfill alternatives. But even the most progressive council members agreed with the staff’s recommendation to exclude the company’s proposal.
Councilwoman Teri Castillo (D5) called the revenue-sharing proposition “fascinating,” but said she understood why the company wasn’t selected after hearing Valencia’s explanation of the challenges. Castillo asked staff to consider whether a pilot program could be attempted alongside other traditional landfill contracts.
A shrewd deal
In the meantime, San Antonio is looking at contracts with three traditional landfill vendors.
“None of the proposed contracts have a guaranteed minimum tonnage,” Valencia said. “So if a new solution were to present itself, it could continue to be explored.”
Two would be a continuation with current vendors: BFI Waste Systems of
North America, LLC, also known as Republic Services, which has a landfill on the East Side; and Waste Management of Texas Inc., which has one on the city’s West Side.
The city also owns a transfer station near San Antonio International Airport that the Texas Disposal System uses to take trash to a landfill in Buda. A different company, Waste Connections, is bidding to deposit waste in Luling, but the city still needs to find a different vendor to transport it there.
The unusually long current contracts were negotiated under then-Mayor Nelson Wolff, and considered a great cost-saving mechanism, said Mayor Ron Nirenberg.
The new contracts would span 10 years each, with two five-year renewal options, at a cost of of $13.3 million per year.
“We wanted to be able to lock in the disposal cost long term,” Valencia said. “I would actually prefer to a longer-term contract, maybe not another 30 years, but 10 years was a good point that both the vendors and the city felt comfortable with.”
The council is expected to vote on the new recommended contracts in the coming weeks. They would begin in October of 2025.
