Rabanco Wants A Second Chance -- Garbage-Hauler Pushing City To Reconsider Contract Award

The Seattle City Council is being subjected to a full-court press by Rabanco Inc., which lost a potentially huge contract to haul Seattle's garbage.

Rabanco is making a last-ditch effort to get the City Council to reconsider its decision to award the contract to Waste Management Inc.

Company officials, with help from their attorneys and a public-relations firm, have bombarded city administrators and the council with promises of lower prices and fewer legal hassles if Seattle's garbage is taken to their Klickitat County landfill instead of Waste Management's in north-central Oregon.

Former Mayor Charles Royer's administration last year selected Washington Waste Systems, a subsidiary of Waste Management, to haul the city's waste by rail to its landfill in Arlington, Ore. Rabanco and Burlington Environmental Services Inc. lost the competition for one of the largest contracts the city will ever award - perhaps as much as $1 billion during the next 40 years.

After some debate, the council accepted Royer's recommendation, in part because of Waste Management's experience in operating landfills and because the company at the time was on the verge of opening a huge regional landfill in Gilliam County, Ore.

Rabanco's ranking reflected two major concerns the mayor and council had with the company. Rabanco's disposal price per ton was higher than Waste Management's, and the company hasn't run a solid-waste landfill since its dump on the Tulalip Indian Reservation closed in the 1970s.

Royer and the council also were worried about the company's ability to complete work on its Klickitat County landfill in time to begin accepting waste by Jan. 1, 1992, when Seattle must stop using King County's Cedar Hills Landfill.

Rabanco's proposed landfill was the target of several lawsuits challenging the way Klickitat County commissioners approved the site. The Yakima Indian Nation joined those suits and filed two of its own. And members of the Pine Creek band of Yakimas, who live next to the proposed landfill site, also filed claims.

In addition, several members of the Yakima Nation have written to the Columbia River Gorge Commission expressing concern over Rabanco's plans to ship garbage by rail along the north bank of the river.

But many of the legal problems that appeared insurmountable last year have since been cleared up. All but one of the lawsuits have been dismissed, and Weaver concedes the Yakima Indians haven't been successful in blocking construction of the landfill.

For its part, Rabanco has worked to overcome the Native Americans' objections to the landfill. The company signed mitigation agreements with members of the Pine Creek band, promising road and utility improvements and 10 percent of the jobs at the new landfill.

And the effort has paid off. Rabanco has all but one of the permits it needs, and construction on the landfill has begun. A contract has been signed with Snohomish County, and a year from now the company is scheduled to begin shipping that county's waste to Klickitat County.

Buoyed by their recent progress, Rabanco officials argue that enough has changed that Seattle should give them a second chance before it signs a contract with Washington Waste Systems.

Jim Hodge, senior vice president of Rabanco, argues that a garbage contract with Rabanco would keep Seattle's money in Washington state, boosting Klickitat County's economy. He adds that sending the city's waste to a landfill in Washington also protects the city from the whims of Oregon politics.

To help plead their case, Rabanco has hired the consulting firm O'Neill & Co., which in turn contracted with former Seattle deputy mayor Bob Royer to work on this issue.

The job has put Bob Royer in the unique position of trying to convince the City Council to overturn one of his brother's decisions.

So far, however, Rabanco's arguments haven't been very persuasive.

Despite a barrage of phone calls and letters to solid-waste officials and council members, threatening to undercut Waste Management's price no matter how low it is, the city is continuing to negotiate a primary garbage contract with Washington Waste Systems.

Those negotiations, says Tom Tierney, an aide to Mayor Norm Rice, are proceeding so well that the mayor hopes to have a tentative garbage contract to take to the council sometime next month.

Solid-waste officials contend that to let Rabanco back into the running now would violate the process the city set up to select a contractor and would invite a lawsuit.