MOSA Past and Present

It seems that the next big challenge for the County Board is going to be the series of decisions that have to be made about MOSA, the regional solid waste authority, named for its three county members: Madison, Otsego and Schoharie.

Otsego County has been trying to extract itself from MOSA since before I came on the Board, mostly, as I understand, because the contract which binds the counties together requires that each provide a fixed tonnage of trash (GAT, or guaranteed annual tonnage) to the MOSA landfills in Montgomery County. If a county does not achieve its GAT at the end of the year, it pays a fee commensurate with its shortfall; this is why you get a solid waste user fee most years – to pay the GAT shortfall.

Trash tonnage, it seems, has not lived up to expectations, at least in Otsego County. In addition, those who are informed about these things assert that there are many haulers who are not bringing their trash to the MOSA landfill, for economic reasons. This is illegal, as a result of Otsego County's membership in MOSA, but it's hard for landfill operators to determine where a particular load of trash came from. And it's not in the interests of an out-of-MOSA landfill operator to turn away a paying load of trash because it came from the wrong county. Thus, the GAT remains unfulfilled year after year.

The economics of solid waste disposal are complicated and I don't intend to lay them out in detail (at this point, I probable couldn't, anyway). Long ago, when sanitation (or lack of it) was a major health issue, local governments became involved for the good of all. Today, it's not necessary, and in New York State, no local municipality of any type is required to be in the solid waste business (although every municipality is required to have a law regarding separation of recyclables). MOSA made sense decades ago, when it was established, but it doesn't now. 

To add to the confusion, the MOSA administration has been completely unwilling to cooperate in Otsego County's extraction. Our county owns 40% of MOSA, and so is entitled to that proportion of the assets. MOSA took a year and a half to do an appraisal – an epic feat of foot-dragging – and then apparently over-valued the two transfer stations in Otsego County (Oneonta and Cooperstown). Since these two facilities would revert to Otsego County once we left MOSA, their value would be subtracted from the full cash value of MOSA, so it's to MOSA's advantage to over-value them.

And finally, the MOSA agreement which binds the three counties together in the regional authority expires on April 30, 2014. If there's one thing that the Board seems to agree with, it's that Otsego County will be out of MOSA on May 1, 2014, if we can't get out before. And what then?

This post is long enough; I'll comment about the possible future(s) of solid waste in Otsego County soon.