After years of underfunding and still with millions of dollars owed to vendors, the V.I. Waste Management Authority is considering implementing multiple fees to boost revenues.
During his report to the authority’s board of directors Friday, Interim Executive Director Daryl Griffith said that a $5 million infusion from Jeffrey Epstein-related settlement funds in April helped the authority break even this year and helped them lower their accounts payable from $25 million to $22 million.
“So it’s still a lot owed to our local contractors,” he said. “But that’s why we’re pushing so hard on getting garbage collection fees, so that we can be at break even and then start knocking out what we owe the contractors from the tremendous expenses that were done from the hurricane — and also from just always being underfunded in the budget.”
Griffith said the key to whittling down the authority’s arrears in the coming years will be securing approval from the V.I. Public Services Commission to impose garbage collection fees, which he said could net the WMA $6.8 million per year.
“After that, if I get that passed, I’m immediately going to come back with higher fees and oil collection fees and white goods,” like refrigerators and other large household appliances, he said, “just because those are some of the biggest expenses that we receive in terms of garbage collection.”
Griffith said that it’s impossible for a territory with approximately 80,000 people to pay for garbage generated by 1.8 million visitors.
“So after we get the local stuff taken care of, we then have to go on to charge for the tourists,” he said. “And it’s done on almost every island and every country that I’ve visited. There’s not an island or country that I’ve visited … that doesn’t have some fee for that.”
Board members discussed several ways to impose the fees. One way would be to include them in residents’ property taxes. Another way would be to charge residents through the V.I. Water and Power Authority’s electric meters.
“My real fear about WAPA is: I really feel that if WAPA hits an emergency and there’s an oil ship out there, and they’re saying that if we don’t pay this vendor, we’re not going to be able to get oil and … we’re not going to be able to provide power for you, they’ll use the funds,” Griffith said. “And we’ll forgive them for using the funds, as a territory … just because the reality is that you have to have power on.”
The board also discussed challenges faced by the authority’s enforcement division, which issued 204 citations in the last quarter alone. Griffith said last year’s total — 350 — should have netted the authority approximately $300,000, but the WMA has only collected approximately 10% of that.
At one point, Griffith acknowledged that crews working on a lateral wastewater pipe in Frederiksted had started digging up parts of King Street without a permit. Public Works Commissioner Derek Gabriel, who chairs WMA’s board of directors, said DPW regularly meets with the utilities and that the permit requirement should have come up in one of those meetings.
“But what my thing is now — and I’m saying it in a public forum — with the Waste Management Authority and with the Water and Power Authority, if the government itself isn’t following our processes, it’s hard to ask the public and the private citizens to follow our processes,” he said. “That’s it. I mean … we can’t think it’s okay to block off King Street without even issuing a public notice.”
Gabriel later credited Griffith’s work at the authority.
“We’re making progress,” he said. “There’s still a lot of work left to be done, but we are making progress.”
At the start of Friday’s meeting, the board authorized a $1.47 million contract with Vivot Industries to purchase, ship and install pump station equipment at the Fig Tree pump station on St. Croix.
