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Dear Community,
We'd like to thank you for your patience with garbage and recycling collection over the last few weeks, especially those of you on the Wednesday route.
A Christmas Eve snowstorm impacted trash and recycling pickup that day, as Casella, the company the city contracts with for collection, cancelled service due to the weather conditions. Casella was unable to accommodate an extra pickup due to the holiday week, but agreed to pick up the following Wednesday, including any extra trash that had accumulated. The city also welcomed impacted residents to bring overflow garbage to the Transfer Station the weekend following the missed pick-up, free of charge. Casella offered that residents could bring their trash to its Transfer Station in Westbrook as well.
Casella did return to collect last Wednesday (New Years Eve) as planned, but they were not able to pick up the entire route. This is because there was so much extra garbage and they needed to load the overflow by hand, and they ran out of time to collect the whole route. (City ordinance says they are only able to collect between 7 AM and 9 PM.) They returned on the New Years holiday to pick up any trash they were unable to get to on Wednesday.
Thank you for your flexibility and understanding that the combination of bad weather and the holidays made for a challenging garbage and recycling pickup the last few Wednesdays. Please understand all did our best under the circumstances, but we understand this was an inconvenience, especially during the holidays when trash builds up. For anyone who missed the updates we posted on social media (the algorithm is tricky that way sometimes), please sign up to receive email notifications for "Public Notices, Updates & Alerts" at southportland.gov/signup.
Finally, thank you to the Casella staff who worked to collect all of the accumulated garbage, to our South Portland Public Works staff who cleared the snow and salted the roads all day on Christmas Eve, and to the staff who responded to many inquiries about the changed collection schedule. It takes a village sometimes.
Thanks, everyone.