As of Wednesday, Bates Trucking, Marco Trucking, Just Right Trucking, and Goldmine Trash Removal have all stopped hauling trash to the St. Croix landfill. The four major waste haulers on staged a massive protest action, blocking entry to the Anguilla Landfill and deciding as a group to stop collecting waste throughout St. Croix until payments owed to them by the V.I. government are made in full.
While a total sum of what is owed to the four haulers was not divulged, Marco St. Croix alone is owed $23 million dating back to 2017, according to company owner Shawn Baptiste.
“This is not our intent but they’ve brought us to a point whereas we’ve sat down with [the Waste Management executive director], the governor — we’ve sat down with everybody that we could and at the end of the day we haven’t gotten not 1 cent drop in the bucket,” Mr. Baptiste said.
Senator Novelle Francis was in the area speaking to haulers and making phone calls in search of a solution. Mr. Francis appeared frustrated by the situation, and said the Senate has consistently allocated funds to the Waste Management Authority to fund services provided by the waste haulers. He deemed the matter unacceptable, and said the Bryan administration should make immediate moves to fulfill the government’s covenants with the haulers.
Also on the scene was Senator Kenneth Gittens. He too stood with the haulers and said he had been making calls to find a swift solution. “I’m sorry that it came to this for us to give the attention to this situation,” he said.
According to the VI Source, attempts to reach Governor Bryan for comment were unsuccessful.
Sammuel Sanes, a former senator and current St. Croix administrator with the Bryan administration, said the government was working to bring a solution to the matter today. “The executive branch is trying to get funding at this time as we speak,” he said. “I know that there are contracts that have not been fulfilled, I understand that, and hopefully by the end of today we will be able to come to some type of agreement. That’s what we’re working on right now.”
The Waste Management Authority has been given the power to collect tipping fees for using the territory’s dumps, as a way to mitigate the costs to the government.
