Garbage Bills in Some Schuylkill County Communities are Going Up … WAY UP

Garbage collection rates in at least two Schuylkill County communities are likely going way up in 2025.

And if your municipality is currently soliciting bids from sanitation companies, you’re probably going to see a shocking jump in your garbage bills going forward.

On Monday, Palo Alto council members accepted a bid from Casella Waste Systems to collect trash in the borough for the next four years. Customers there will get to put out one large item per week and get curbside recycling collection every two weeks.

But the real news here is how much Palo Alto residents are going to pay for that service.

In 2023, residents pay $220 annually for trash collection service. Although council members didn’t set the individual rates for 2025-28, the bill is going way up.

Next year, Casella is charging $152,550. For 2026, the rate is $157,127. In 2027, it’ll be $161,840, and for 2028, Palo Alto must pay Casella $166,696.

A council member did some quick math and figured out that for 2027, the per-customer rate would be somewhere in the neighborhood of $357 and in 2028, it works out to about $370.

That works out to about a 68% increase from 2023 to 2028. But again, Palo Alto council didn’t set a per-customer rate yet.

It was a similar story in Port Carbon on Tuesday night as council members there reviewed bids from Casella and Tamaqua Transfer, which also submitted bids for the Palo Alto job.

Casella was the low bidder in Port Carbon but low is a relative term, in this case.

The per-customer average for next year in Port Carbon, based on Casella’s low bid, would be about $384. In 2023, Port Carbon customers are paying between $215 and $225, depending on when they pay.

Borough Council members in Port Carbon opted to re-open the bidding process to allow companies to submit proposals that would have them collect recycling only once a month instead of every other week.

If Port Carbon does eventually accept the low bid it saw on Tuesday from Casella, that would equate to about a 75% increase. Council members there expect to award a sanitation contract in November

Based on what Palo Alto council members were told by Larry Wittig, representing Tamaqua Transfer, on Monday, it seems all Schuylkill County residents who get municipal trash pick-up will be seeing a massive jump in their garbage bills, if they haven’t seen it already.

Wittig actually encouraged Palo Alto board members to pick up a fourth-year option from Casella, even though it was preventing him from resubmitting a bid for the job a year sooner in the future.

“They gave you guys a really good deal,” Wittig said. “Even though it hurts me, I would with a fourth year.”

Witting told council members that these price hikes are a result of drastically increased costs since they last negotiated a sanitation contract: employee wages, diesel cost, and landfill fees.