Garbage keeps getting more expensive – to get rid of.

Even as residents in unincorporated areas of Indian River County – including about 4,500 households on the barrier Island – continue to grumble about having to shell out for universal curbside trash pickup starting Oct. 1, the county commission has raised the amount residents will pay to operate the county landfill.

Up until now, people who wanted regular curbside trash pickup signed up with Waste Management, now called WM, receiving a crisp, clean bill in the mail each month, which they paid in exchange for the service.

A year ago, though, commissioners decided to mandate universal curbside trash pick-up for the nearly 90,000 households in the unincorporated portions of the county, starting this fall.

That move roped in more than 20,000 households that had not been paying for garbage pickup and raised the cost for existing WM customers by more than 20 percent.

When universal service begins, WM will still do the pickup, but customers won’t get monthly bills anymore. Instead the cost will be added as a new line on property tax bills, with an average household paying about $181 plus $4.50 for recyclables.

The county has had universal recycling pickup for years and commissioners went to universal trash pickup in part because some residents were putting household garbage in their blue recycling bins. That saved them the monthly cost of trash pickup but contaminated the recycling stream.

Now garbage costs – and property taxes – are going up again.

Last month, on June 17, commissioners signed off on a consultant’s recommendation to increase the “County Landfill Fee” – which appears as a line item on property tax bills – by 57 percent over the next five years.

Currently, a typical family generates about 1.5 tons of household trash, yard waste, and recyclables each year, and pays around $163 in landfill fees – which are separate from the cost of garbage and recycling pickup.

Those fees will increase by 15 percent annually in 2026, 2027 and 2028, and then by 6 percent per year the next two years, to a total of $260 by 2030 – an increase of about $100 per household.

What is behind all these increases?

For starters, the four companies that haul the trash, operate the landfill and process recyclables have increased their fees by about 49 percent overall, according to Himanshu Mehta, managing director of the county’s Solid Waste Disposal District.

And there are five major capital improvement projects planned for the next several years that will cost more than $25 million:

- Construction of a new cell at a cost of $14 million. The landfill is divided into cells. Each cell measures 10 acres. A pitched base of compacted soil is lined with high-density polyethylene to prevent leachate from entering the freshwater aquifer. Then, another layer of dirt with a grid of perforated pipes is constructed to collect the leachate and drain it out of the cell for processing. That layer is topped by a semi-permeable liner, and then household trash goes on top.
  
  Cells used to take eight or nine years to fill up, said Mehta, but with the population swelling, the current cell, finished just last year, will be full in five years. The county must begin designing and planning next year in order to have a new cell ready by 2030, he said.
- Creation of a new household hazardous waste and recycling transfer facility at a cost of $5 million. After the county’s recycling is dropped at the landfill it is sorted and trucked to St. Lucie County for processing. The tent used for sorting was destroyed by Hurricane Milton last year. The new facility will be sturdier, built to withstand storms, Mehta said.

Construction of a dedicated right-turn lane and widened entrance to the landfill at a cost of $2.25 million. With extra trash coming in from construction and the new universal curbside pickup program, this is necessary to prevent a traffic bottleneck at the landfill entrance, Mehta said.

Construction of a new Solid Waste Disposal District administration building at a cost of $3 million. This project is planned for 2030, Mehta said.

Improvements to the landfill’s construction and demolition operations at a cost of $1.2 million. Construction in the county is at an all-time high and the C&D area of the landfill needs to expand, Mehta said.

“With unincorporated residents already looking at a new line item on their property tax bill for curbside collection [for universal curbside service], I can understand their concern about service assessments also going up next year,” Mehta said. “What I can say is we’ve done everything in our ability to be transparent with our procurement and competitive bidding processes to ensure that we maintain the lowest prices for our operations.”

Commissioners held several public meetings about the issue and opted for universal curbside collection because it made the most sense economically, Mehta said.

“It’s really a necessity, as much as our county is growing. It’s a beautiful county and we want to keep it that way,” he said.

About 75 percent of unincorporated residents were already subscribing to WM for curbside service, Mehta said. “Had we kept things as they were, their rates would have doubled. By choosing universal service, the rates only increased by about 23 percent. We still have one of the lowest collection rates in the area.”

Delivery of new household trash and yard waste carts is underway and will continue through August. Universal collection in unincorporated areas begins Oct. 1, the first day of the next fiscal year. Indian River County has had countywide universal curbside collection of recyclables since 1991.

The county’s four municipalities, the cities of Vero Beach and Sebastian and the towns of Orchid and Indian River Shores, have their own trash hauling contracts and costs.