City of Riverdale issued the following announcement on Mar. 28.
The City was notified by Republic Services that due to the COVID-19 pandemic, they were changing the nature of the services they were providing to cities (Riverdale among them) for the foreseeable future.
Specifically, Republic explained they will continue to collect waste from households and businesses, but that they would suspend bulky waste and yard waste pick-ups.
According to Matt Pivit (the Municipal Services Manager from Republic), if your waste material can not fit in your garbage cart, they will not take it. This is to assure that workers are not touching waste. Carts (for both garbage and recycling) are picked up using a robotic arm on the side of the truck collecting material.
Services are expected to resume once the COVID-19 situation is in-hand.
What Will We Do?
Believe it or not, we were working on this problem before the Friday night storm that filled many Riverdale basements with rainwater. What we initially thought would be just a yard waste problem is now something much more substantial and we’re taking this matter very seriously.
Yard Waste. We will be confirming with the Compost Facility that we can bring yard waste to the facility for the foreseeable future. I will also be discussing this with Republic to see if we can reduce the fees we pay them to cover the cost of dropping material off for composting. Assuming this can all be worked out in an agreeable manner, we will advise residents on how we can all work together to dispose of our yard waste during the spring using volunteers, city vehicles and proper social distancing.
For seniors unable to haul/move bags of yard waste, please be patient. Let us know and we’ll work on a solution.
Bulky Waste. We will be contacting Republic on Monday to see if we can line up two roll-off dumpsters for residents who have bulky waste that they need to remove from their home immediately. This means ruined household items as a result of Friday’s storms. It’s important folks can get this material out of their houses and let their basements dry out so mold doesn’t develop.
If there’s room left in the dumpsters, then we’ll keep them around for another week so people can toss in their other bulky waste. When the dumpsters are full, we’ll have Republic haul them away and take the material to the landfill.
Community Clean-Up. So what are we going to do about our traditional “Community Clean-Up”? It’s likely we’ll still have some kind of clean-up activity later on this year – but it will probably be more focused on picking up litter and roadside waste moreso than household, bulky waste. The City will contact the Waste Commission of Scott County to see if there’s a way we can get plenty of iLiveHere garbage bags, tongs and other tools for households who want to get outside and do something to make Riverdale look even better than usual.
Let us know if you’ve got the “anti-litter” bug and we’ll help get you equipped!
Original source can be found here.
Source: City of Riverdale
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