Solid Waste and Recycling Collection Boundary Review

Solid waste and recycling collection within unincorporated Washington County, Oregon, is managed by private collection companies, who use legal certificates that guarantee them exclusive authority to collect waste in each geographic area. The last update of the County’s sanitary service certificates before the completion of this project was nearly 50 years ago. As the County’s landscape was changed by annexations, property development, and road construction, the County realized the certificates were no longer clearly defining reasonable service boundaries.

FLO Analytics was engaged to help the County identify all the existing certificate service boundaries and update them or define new ones as needed to reflect the changes that had occurred.  We began the project by compiling, assessing, and digitizing the County’s original hauler certificate areas. We then mapped out the changes that had happened since the certificates were created, including company consolidations and certificate transfers, identified any discrepancies, and evaluated them with respect to existing hauler customer service areas. As part of developing new certificate areas, we facilitated the consensus-building process between the County and collection companies to ensure agreement on the updated boundaries that more accurately reflected the existing environment and brokering exchanges or modifications to improve hauler efficiency. When we had achieved consensus, we finalized digital and paper maps precisely defining the updated sanitary service certificate boundaries, which the Washington County Board of Commissioners adopted without modification.