County chooses Waste Management, Waste Pro

County chooses two haulers to serve South End

The Santa Rosa County Commission has selected Waste Management and Waste Pro to receive franchise agreements to provide solid-waste services to the Midway and Navarre areas.

At a special meeting today, commissioners interviewed five of the nine companies who made proposals for single-provider services based on the county's request for proposals. After the presentations, commissioners agreed to award two contracts to encourage competition during the first three-year contract period. After some discussion, they ranked the companies and County Administrator Hunter Walker tallied the votes. Waste Management ranked slightly higher than Waste Pro and will be asked to choose which zone it would prefer to serve, the 32563 ZIP code area with about 9,000 homes or the 32566 ZIP code area, Holley-Navarre-Navarre Beach, which has about 13,000 residences. Waste Pro will be asked to negotiate a contract for service to the other zone.

Other providers interviewed Tuesday included Allied Waste/Republic Services, Veolia Environmental Services and Emerald Waste Services.

To watch the special meeting, which lasted about 3 1/2 hours, go to the county's website, click on "Meetings and Agendas" in at the top of the column to the left. Find February 15 on the calendar, click "Solid Waste Service Interviews" and, on when the new window opens, click "Watch Meeting Replay." The replay should be uploaded to the website and available for viewing by Wednesday afternoon.