The Sitka Assembly voted Tuesday (9-8-26) to add a large-scale dumpster option to the city’s solid waste code.
Currently, code requires all homes, businesses, and liveaboards within one mile of the road system to participate in the city’s garbage collection service. The service offers three container sizes: a 48-gallon can, a 96-gallon can, and a 300 gallon can.
Municipal Administrator John Leach said staff proposed adding a 3,000 gallon rolloff container — essentially a large green dumpster — to the list.
“There are some places that have them already, other places that want them, but we don’t have a rate in our code that establishes a rate for roll-off containers,” he said.
Leach said the dumpster rate will depend on whether it’s for a commercial business, a public good like a school or grocery store, or a residential neighborhood.
The neighborhood cost-share option would function similarly to an HOA, and would allow residential households to collectively use the rolloff in lieu of standard individual curbside service.
Leach said it could help with bear issues in certain neighborhoods like the Indian River subdivision, where bears tend to get into household cans.
“So if a neighborhood says they have a bear concern, and they would rather have the garbage in a centralized location away from their home, to keep the costs equal, there’s a minimum number of households in that neighborhood that would have to agree to that, and they would lose the service in front of their home,” Leach said. “We would place a roll-off there, and then they would put their garbage into the roll-off container.”
The cost-share program would require a minimum of 40 participating households per container, but no more than 80. The program is expected to cost about $80 a month, per household.
The assembly voted unanimously to move forward with the code update on first reading. It will come back to the assembly table for a second vote later this month.
