New Orleans Is Bleeding Money on Trash Pickup

New Orleans Is Bleeding Money on Trash Pickup 

You've been paying $24 a month for trash pickup since 2011. That fee hasn't budged in 15 years. And for most of that time, nobody made a big deal about it. The City just quietly made up the difference. Until now.

Here’s everything you need to know. 

What's the issue, and why is it coming up now?

It costs the City $62 million a year to run sanitation services. The $24 monthly fee only brings in $38 million. That's a $24 million gap every single year that the City has been filling by pulling money from the general fund, the same pot of money that pays for police, fire, roads, and parks.

For years, that was an uncomfortable but manageable arrangement. The City had enough cushion that nobody had to deal with this discrepancy. But New Orleans is now in a full-blown budget crisis, operating week to week, with cash on hand covering less than one month of expenses. 

Last month, Mayor Moreno proposed increasing the sanitation fee, though she didn’t say by how much. Following pushback from City Council and the public, she paused the fee hike vote and directed the State Legislative Auditor (the legislature’s independent watchdog that audits state and local finances, and advises lawmakers on fiscal matters) to look into it. She asked the Legislative Auditor to verify how many households are actually on the service rolls, because the City's own records may be outdated and inaccurate. The City might not even have a reliable count of what it's paying for right now. Once that's sorted, a fee increase vote goes back to the council. 

What do you currently pay, and what does it cover?

Residents currently pay $24 a month for once-a-week curbside trash and recycling pickup.

Before Hurricane Ida (2021), New Orleans had twice-weekly trash collection. Ida disrupted the old contracts, and when the city brought in new ones, they changed the schedule to once-weekly to better match fees with the actual cost of pickup. Many residents still want twice-weekly pickup back, but the services were never fully covered by the fee we pay.

As contractor costs have risen, even once-a-week service leaves a shortfall. The fee has simply never reflected what trash collection actually costs. The cost of Sanitation includes more than just garbage cans and trucks; it also includes: 

• Fuel & Maintenance - Collection trucks are large, heavy-duty diesel vehicles that run daily across the City. As fuel prices rise, these costs continue to increase. Beyond fuel, the trucks require constant upkeep, whether this be engines, hydraulics, compactors, and tires which all wear down under continuous use. An analysis done by the EREF (Environmental Research & Education Foundation) found a strong statistical link between vehicle maintenance costs and rising landfill fees. These stem from the same inflationary pressures hitting fuel and fleet maintenance, which are simultaneously pushing up disposal costs. 

• Personnel - Sanitation is also labor-intensive at every stage. Drivers, loaders, supervisors, dispatchers, and administrative staff combine to make sure sanitation runs smoothly. 

• Tipping fees - Once the truck is full, the waste has to go somewhere. Tipping fees (the per-ton charge landfills levy when waste is delivered), represent the cost of disposal itself, and they too have risen drastically in the last decade. Transfer stations, which serve as interim logistics hubs where collection trucks unload before waste moves to a final landfill another layer. Trucks are weighed at the scale house, a tipping fee is charged, and the waste is reloaded onto larger long-haul trailers for the final leg. Every ton of garbage collected generates a fee at that point. 

• Special Event and Public Space Cleanup - New Orleans carries sanitation obligations that most parishes don’t have. According to The Gambit, Sanitation Director Matt Torri warned City Council that without overtime funding, the City would face delays in litter removal, illegal dumping response, disaster cleanup, Mardi Gras special event cleanup, second-line cleanup, and public health hazard response. In the French Quarter and Downtown Development District, the sanitation department also funds pressure washing, mechanical street sweeping, orphan-bag collection, and graffiti removal. 

• Administrative and Contract Management - Running a system of multiple contractors across different geographic zones requires oversight staff, compliance monitoring, and contract administration. The City’s contracts currently require garbage vendors to have specific equipment and technology upgrades on their trucks, with clear guidelines for missed collections, late collections, and cart repair timelines. All of this must be tracked and enforced.

How much of the general fund does Sanitation actually use?

The $38 million the fee brings in covers just over half of the $62 million sanitation program cost, leaving $24 million that has to come from somewhere else, and that somewhere else has been the general fund.

Three private contractors currently split up the city's trash routes: IV Waste, run by Sidney Torres; Waste Pro, a multistate company based in Kenner; and Richard's Disposal, run by Alvin Richard. The curbside contracts with these three firms make up the bulk of the $62 million cost. The rest covers recycling processing, illegal dumping cleanup, event cleanup (think every festival and Mardi Gras), French Quarter pressure washing, and department overhead.

How do we compare to our neighbors?

Poorly.

Jefferson Parish residents pay $50.40 every two months (about $25.20 a month) for twice-weekly pickup, bulk waste collection, and tire and appliance removal. That rate was set in 2024 after Jefferson raised its fees to keep pace with costs. And there are many reasons why New Orleans residents pay almost the same price for less. Structural issues such as premium contractor rates, absorbing landfill costs separately, and funding event cleanup, without parish-owned infrastructure or even a competitive bidding environment that keeps costs down elsewhere, are likely part of the major discrepancy for what the fee is worth in New Orleans compared to Jefferson Parish. 

East Baton Rouge residents pay $35.23 a month for twice-weekly garbage pickup, weekly recycling, and weekly bulk item collection. That's $11 more a month than New Orleans, for a better service package, on a sustainable fee structure.

What could the city actually do?

There are a few realistic paths, none of them painless:

Raise the fee. The most straightforward fix. How much it would go up hasn't been officially proposed. Moreno paused the vote before a number was locked in, pending the household count audit. To fully close the $24 million gap, the fee would need to roughly double, though the city could raise it partially and find savings elsewhere to cover the rest. 

Tiered fees. Some cities structure sanitation fees based on property value or income, so lower-income residents pay less while higher earners pick up more of the tab. This would make a fee hike more politically manageable. 

Bring it in-house. New Orleans used to run its own municipal sanitation department before shifting to private contractors. The theoretical argument is that cutting out contractor profit margins could reduce costs. The practical reality is complicated because it would require upfront capital investment in trucks, facilities, and staffing, and there's no guarantee it comes out cheaper. However, Jefferson Parish owns some of its own infrastructure, which has helped cut costs. 

Cut services. If nothing else changes, services could start disappearing or being cut back. Recycling pickup, illegal dumping cleanup, event cleanup, and French Quarter pressure washing. All of it is on the table. The city cannot keep doing all of this while losing $24 million a year on the program. Mardi Gras cleanup alone is a massive sanitation operation; that becomes a real problem fast if the budget isn't resolved.