ABC Disposal Legal Council Responds to New Bedford Letter

NEW BEDFORD — In response to a letter sent to ABC Disposal on Friday by the City of New Bedford, citing several violations in the contract that the trash and recyclable vendor has with the city, ABC's legal council, George Leontire, has responded.

Here is the response to the city:

I suggest you talk to the Mayor about the PR aspect. We have recordings of all his radio appearances and patently false statements. My client has a right to defend itself from such attacks and will continue to do so.

As regards his threats to terminate the contract for your unsupported Mickey Mouse reasons do so if you are confident you have the grounds. If you want to terminate the contract we can sit down and do so. If you try and terminate alleging my client is at fault we will sue for millions of dollars in damages.

My client has been abiding by the contract and collecting recyclables for almost a year since the crises began. We are proceeding to resolve this matter in the courts. Even now with the rejection policy ABC is collecting 80% of the residents recyclable carts. Hopefully, that number will continue to increase as residents recognize they must adhere to the requirements.

We advised you of this latest crises in July and that we would have to begin rejecting carts with contaminated material unless you wanted to pay for the contamination surcharge. After letters from us and two meetings you essentially said go pound tar you were not going to do anything about city residents non compliance with the recycling requirements. The only choice left ABC was to continue to collect contaminated material and pay up to a 75% cost increase or per the contract reject loads that did not comply. The Mayor has done nothing to resolve this latest crises never mind failing to address the initial crises of the tripling of the Tipping Fees charged to ABC.

Finally, to assure that only carts with non-recyclable material are being rejected ABC offered to have City inspectors ride along and examine the carts with ABC employees. That offer is still open but the Mayor's history of dealing with these issues is to just complain and threaten rather then to find solutions.

George Leontire, Legal Council, ABC Disposal