Malone Circle resident Ronald Smith is finished with the level of service he receives of Fairburn garbage contractor BFI.

No stranger to issuing his concerns about the nauseating smell of the potentially hazardous black fluid that leaks out of the company’s garbage trucks, Smith brought those concerns to the Oct. 24 City Council meeting.

“With great sadness I stand before you again concerning BFI and the condition that BFI is leaving our neighborhoods and our streets. I was assured (at a prior meeting) that the BFI problem would be resolved in a timely fashion,” Smith said concisely. “Here we are, 15 months down the road, and we have seen no improvement whatsoever. At a time where you cannot turn on the national news without hearing of the fear of a pandemic breaking out and our elected officials are allowing a company to leave the vile, potentially contaminated filth in front of our homes week after week, month after month, year after year, and no action coming from our elected officials. I find that appalling. I find it appalling that when I call City Hall for assistance, the issue is wrapped up as an individual issue and BFI calls me and the first thing out of their mouth is ‘I understand I have a problem.’ I don’t have a problem. The city has a problem which they refuse to resolve.”

Diplomatic but determined, Smith said he is finished with having to drive through the leachate on the street, tracking it into his garage. He said the smell of the liquid is nauseating, noting that he has seen neighborhood children stepping barefoot into it as the play in the cul-de-sac during summer months.

Smith showed photos of the stains from the leachate to council members.

“This is what we’re getting,” he said. “This is how they are leaving our streets.”

Responding to Smith’s comments, Mayor Betty Hannah said the city’s garbage service would be going out for bid in March. Smith remained unconvinced, saying that citizens were told last year that the problem would be resolved, but with no result.

“I’m not going to live this way,” Smith said after the meeting. “If I have to take my life savings, I’m going to do it.”

Standing on the street in front of his home Wednesday, Smith pointed out the obvious black stains positioned in front his house and the homes near him. Smith said he first thought the stains were left when an animal had torn into trash bags, but later realized that the liquid refuse was coming from the garbage trucks themselves when he saw the black liquid draining from the trucks. The slow-drying liquid carried a nauseating odor and dries to a long lasting black stain. Those stains are clearly evident in front of driveways on other streets around Fairburn.

Commenting after the meeting, City Administrator Jim Williams said the city has received complaints relating to the service provided by BFI.

“We think it’s deplorable that the trucks go around the city and from time to time they’ll lose trash and they’ll lose substance from within the truck. We don’t support that at all and we’re constantly telling them to do a better job. This should not happen. BFI agrees this should not happen,” Williams said. “We forced with the situation. We’ve got a contract with them. They are out there collecting garbage. This gentleman comes in time after time complaining about it. We give those complaints to BFI. Something happens for a couple of weeks and then it goes back to the way it was. We just have to have everybody agree that we’re going to do this thing better and then follow through on it. What we might do is put it in the contract that if this happens we’ll go out and clean it up and bill them for it.”

Having maintained a contract with BFI for more than a dozen years, Williams said future contracts for city garbage service, including spilling leachate onto city streets, should reflect a higher level of both service and quality.

“In terms of the overall contract these are marginal type situations. What we want to do for subsequent years is to get performance standards in place so we will not have to tolerate this. This provides a good basis for the next contract we award,” said Williams. “We have been working with BFI under the same contract since 1992. What we want to do is to terminate that contract and develop one that produces a higher level of service than we’ve been getting. What we want to do is come to some agreement on the level of service, the quality of service. It simply needs to be improved across the board. BFI is extremely cooperative. We bring complaints to them and they look into it. The thing is, we need to bring the whole (level of quality and service) up.”

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