Santa Ana, California (KABC) — Some Santa Ana residents are fed up with the city’s new garbage collection service.
Greg Shield lives in a condominium on Village Walk.
“It smells bad,” said Shields. “The sanitary conditions in these bins are terrible and people live 20 feet away.”
People living in the complex have claimed that Republic services have been hit and miss since taking over this month.
“They keep skipping us,” Tony Bullock said.
After 50 years of waste management, the city moved to a new company.
Village Walk employees pay Republic Services to collect 15 trash cans four times a week, but the trash is inconsistent and piles up.
“We’ve called numerous times to get an answer on what’s going on and all they can tell us is ‘we’ll pick it up’ and they “We’re going to pick it up,” said Bullock, “and they don’t.”
“We keep hearing the same stories from Republic,” Shields added. “They’re catching up, they’re getting drivers, they’re getting trucks from other regions.”
In a statement, Republic Services said:
When we launched the service on July 1st, we noticed that a significant amount of trash had been left behind by the previous carrier, resulting in longer collection times. In addition, the drivers that were supposed to be hired from the previous haulage company did not keep their promises, resulting in a temporary shortage of workers. We are quickly filling these positions with drivers from our local and western republican services departments, servicing all routes within the city.All residential, commercial, and Roll-off routes are fully staffed and operating on schedule this week. We thank the City of Santa Ana for their partnership and thank our customers for their patience during this transition.
Waste Management denies the Republic’s claims that trash was left behind.
The company also said all carriers are experiencing driver shortages and should not be held responsible for Republic’s staffing issues.
“There was never really a migration plan in place,” says Shield. “You can’t take over a city of 330,000 people and be in one garbage company one day and another garbage company the next day.
The city of Santa Ana said the issue was resolved as of Monday and the garbage service should be picked up on schedule.
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