Roger Bridgeford
Phone interview 10/24/12
Waste Collection in Fort Benton
 Contract with the City of Fort Benton is renegotiated every 5 years
 Pick up twice a week for residential trash, once a week for commercial
 Paid by number of lifts
 The City of Fort Benton charges citizens $10 or $15 for each water unit.
o Example: a single family home is one water unit. If the hospital has 500 water units, the
city charges them for 500 water units.
 If a household produces more waste than their allotment for base residential service, they can
rent a dumpster from MT Waste, and they are charged the dumpster rate, minus the base
residential rate which they’ve already paid the city
 Said he couldn’t give me precise data on tons waste/year for Fort Benton, because they collect
in Carter, sometimes Loma, and rural houses along the way during the truck’s Fort Benton run
 But he will compile data for the “Greater Fort Benton area” broken into residential/commercial
waste and send it to me
Cardboard recycling
 MT Waste has a contact with Pacific where they get $25/ton for cardboard
 On why it doesn’t pay to collect recycling from distant towns: “If I can fit 40 dumpsters of
garbage on a truck, I can’t get as much cardboard on the same truck.”
o Disposal eats up 20% of our fees for cardboard—meaning if they charge $15/month for
collection, $3 goes to disposing the cardboard
o The only way to make that system work is to charge more for cardboard collection
 “We work with a lot of communities to get recycling going.”
 Town of Lincoln bought a plastic baler, wanted to run it with volunteers, but there was too much
liability and too few volunteers, so it hasn’t been running
 Muncie invited him to speak about waste and recycling options 5-6 years ago at the “senior
center”, Bridgeford suggested that what you’re already doing[baling cardboard] is a good fit for
this town
Curbside collection in Great Falls
 Garbage pick-up is mandatory in Great Falls, citizens can either use City pick up or Montana
Waste
 Montana Waste offers the option of curbside collection for $2 extra a month to collect
newspaper and office paper, cardboard, and aluminum cans
o Less than 1% of clients use the service
Citizen’s Convenience Center
 Was a transfer station
 I asked him where materials from CCC went, he said to the landfill—I assume he just means the
trash collected at the CCC
 People would dump garbage at CCC instead of paying either the city or MT Waste for extra trash
removal
o

Example: if a house has a renovation project, they should just rent a dumpster for a
month or two, but instead people dumped the extra debris at the CCC
Bridgeford thinks the news has exaggerated the importance of the CCC
o CCC was only open 3.5 days in summer, 2 in winter
o People who used to bring recyclables to CCC can bring them to Pacific Recycling instead
(not affiliated with MT Waste) which is open 5 days a week, and get paid for their
materials
MT Waste
 Used to be owned by Waste Management
 Now is small, privately owned. Bridgeford is the manager.
 Says that big waste companies have it much easier, they have staff members who just deal with
Dept of Transportation regulations. MT Waste struggles to keep up with DET regulations, safety
regulations, and so on
 Runs the High Plains landfill in Floweree
 “I want single stream recycling but Waste Management says we don’t have enough volume. The
closest recycling plant is in Spokane, run by Waste Management, but they’ll only give us $ 20-30,
which is inconceivable.”
Mandatory vs. non mandatory collection
 Both Fort Benton and Great Falls have mandatory garbage collection for residents.
 Towns like Lincoln and Geyser don’t have mandatory collection, so people haul garbage to a
container site 10 miles out of town, or they pay a contractor to take it away, but the towns end
up being very messy. Litter all over the place. You’ll notice Fort Benton is much tidier than
Lincoln.