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Roger Merritt, executive director of the Virgin Islands Waste Management Authority has announced that as of January 01, new tipping fees will be enforced at waste disposal sites in the territory. A tipping fee is a monetary charge levied upon a given type and quantity of waste received at a waste disposal facility.
“Recently in July we got our landfill tipping fees approved by the Public Service Commission and we are actually going to be implementing those fees. We are mandated to implement those fees on January 01st, 2022,” he said while speaking as the featured government official in the weekly “Inside the Cabinet” series. The program is aired every Wednesday at 6:00 pm.
The fees will be levied at the three VIWMA Disposal Facilities: the St. Croix Transfer Station, the Bovoni Landfill on St. Thomas, and the Susannaberg Transfer Station on St. John.
According to the Waste Management Authority website, the tipping fee will be levied and collected from all solid waste haulers and other direct customers that deliver solid waste to the three disposal facilities.
Each load of solid waste delivered will be weighed and categorized at the VIWMA waste disposal facility’s scale house upon arrival. The fees will be calculated based on the type of waste delivered and the weight (measured in tons) of the load.
Mr. Merritt said that implementing the new fee is the first phase of any type of fee structure to increase the revenue for the authority. “As we get accustomed to having that fee structure, the universal tipping fee will be dealt with. In my last Senate hearing that was something that came up and it’s something we will have to deal with at the end of the day,” he said.
“In operating the landfills, we do have to have revenue that will allow us to stay in compliance and deal with operational issues such as purchasing new equipment, everything associated with compliance, ground compliance, air compliance — just a variety of things that we have to do in order to maintain and operate both landfills,” Mr. Merritt informed the audience of the program.
“A revenue structure or fees will allow us to make those landfills stay in compliance and are actually allowing us to serve the public in the best way possible,” said Mr. Merritt who also disclosed that the authority is currently working with a consultant to put together an Integrated Solid Waste Management Plan.
“That plan will encompass solid waste with our landfills…There are things that we are doing from the operations side that will be incorporated into a plan and that is actually happening as we speak,” he said.
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