Convenience centers’ new hours irk county residents

Socorro County met with Valley Sanitation, Tuesday, to discuss its contract and address public complaints to convenience center hour and price changes.

The new contract approved by the board on February 27 and scheduled to begin on July 1, will reduce service hours in half and raise rates.

Convenience centers (formerly known as Solid Waste Transfer Stations) will be open Friday and Saturday hours every other week in Magdalena, Lemitar, San Antonio and Veguita instead of every week. It will also increase the half cubic yard price from $2.77 to $6.37 and a full cubic yard will be $12.74.

Valley Sanitation presented financial information from 2023 to the county board that showed a loss of $26,946.42 at the Polvadera station, $12,202.11 at the Magdalena station, $16,773.62 at the San Antonio station and $46,066.03 at the Veguita station.

Larry Leyba, Valley Sanitation operations manager, said the changes were to keep the price affordable, if they didn’t cut the hours, they were looking at $27 a cubic yard. He said they used two years of data before making the proposal to the county.

According to Leyba, when they took over the stations in 2021 they were losing money and with their rising operating costs it became worse.

“We tried to compromise the best we could and the best compromise we have is we have to just reduce the number of days to keep the cost affordable,” Leyba said.

Gayle Rhodes of Lemitar, said she is concerned that people might not be aware of the upcoming changes.

“When people’s trash starts accumulating, their transfer station is closed and they can’t afford the gas of hauling it to Socorro’s dump, they will just start dumping it wherever it is convenient. More people will start burning their trash including plastic bottles and Styrofoam putting toxic fumes in the air,” Rhodes said, “It happened before when the county decided to remove trash service from people’s taxes, making each county resident responsible for their own trash disposal. Many couldn’t afford the dump fees so they either burned their trash, dumped it wherever it was convenient, or dumped it in business dumpsters near where they worked.”

Leyba said he understood concerns of dumping and they do clean up days in communities to help with it. He said curbside service is underutilized outside the limits but it is an option that all of Socorro County residents have access to.

Sammie Vega Finch, interim county manager said the county will always consider public health and safety concerns.

“While the action of the board is final, Socorro County commissioners are always open to listening to public complaints and requesting that their administration follow up on those concerns. We are looking to do that in the upcoming weeks,” Vega Finch said.

She said although this meeting was not public because it primarily was contract administration. Any findings will be reported to the Board of Commissioners at its regular meetings and any future decision that they make regarding this contract will also be determined by the commission during its regular meetings.

Leyba confirmed he attended the meeting, and they will continue the schedule as proposed and after a couple months of data will look at it and make any necessary changes with that information.

In the meantime, he would like customers to reach out to them if they have any concern.

Editor's note: This article includes the correction of each station's financial loss in 2023. We regret the original error.