PITTSFIELD – Earlier this month, Pittsfield transfer station and recycling manager Don Chute held a frank and enlightening conversation with town councilors. He offered suggestions that could cut at least $100,000 off the operating costs of the facility.

One of Chute’s suggestions, which appeared to get a lukewarm reception, was to begin charging private, commercial trash haulers that use the transfer station. They currently pay nothing.

“If [a commercial hauler] slides across the scales at the Clinton transfer station, he pays $60.30 a ton – their tipping fee,” Chute told the town council. “If he goes to Newport, he pays half, or $33. Why do you think that the haulers come in here and complain so loudly to you?

“This is the last place [they] are getting a free ride.”

Less than two weeks after Chute’s comments, Newport selectmen took an even harder stance on tipping fees.

At their selectmen’s meeting last week, town officials voted to charge commercial haulers $68 a ton for solid waste brought to the Newport transfer station – double what they had been paying.

Newport also implemented new weighing regulations to make sure all weight slips provided to the transfer station accurately reflect the weight of the incoming rubbish trucks.

Newport Town Manager James Ricker said last week that he was faced with a $20,000 increase in solid waste removal, which he said was unacceptable for Newport taxpayers to absorb.

South on Route 100, Pittsfield’s transfer station budget for 2002 increased by $76,000, while its recycling center operating costs went up $5,000. Even those figures don’t tell the full story. In 2001, town councilors passed a budget that included projected recycling revenues of $90,000.

End of the year tallies show revenue a disappointing 50 percent less, at about $45,000.

In light of these increases and Chute’s assessment that the town’s mandatory recycling program just isn’t making a difference, town councilors agreed in a budget workshop to send the whole problem to the town’s recycling committee. This group consists of one councilor, Timothy Nichols, and a handful of volunteers.

Councilors asked the committee to immediately meet with Chute and come up with some recommendations on the tipping fee charges and how to boost townwide recycling participation.

No date has yet been set for that meeting.

Meanwhile, Chute, who took over as recycling manager in early fall, reported to town councilors that Pittsfield’s recycling rate is pitiful and has been overreported because so many other towns use Pittsfield’s facility.

Chute said that Pittsfield’s recycling rate is an embarrassing 8 percent. He said that since the center accepts recycling from more than a dozen other towns, the total tonnage of recyclables from the region has been used as Pittsfield’s figure.

“The town of Pittsfield claimed it recycled 1,135 tons by adding all those other towns in,” Chute told the council. “It looks like we actually recycled 267 tons.”

Chute said that since mandatory recycling went into effect in October 2000, he has not seen a perceptible increase in recycling. At the same time, tipping fees increased from $57.48 per ton to $60.30 per ton.

Chute said that by charging the haulers part or all of the tipping fees, not only would operating costs be offset, but recycling levels would increase.

“The haulers would police their customers,” he said. Curbside pickup service was offered as part of the mandatory recycling program last year after citizens packed the town council meetings in objection to a proposed pay-per-bag program.

The pay-per-bag program was proposed as an incentive for residents to recycle. The more that was taken out of the garbage bags and recycled, the less residents would pay for their waste. The user-fee based system was touted as fair to all, costing those who did not recycle more than those who did.

Residents, however, objected to the program which would have charged them about 50 cents per bag. At several meetings held for public comment, residents complained that they are already paying for solid waste removal through their taxes and did not want to pay a second time.