Rivanna Solid Waste Authority adopts budget for FY2026

The official government entity responsible for providing municipal solid waste service in Albemarle County and the City of Charlottesville is the Rivanna Solid Waste Authority.

On May 27, the entity adopted a $10.5 million operating budget for the next fiscal year even though the RSWA only expects to bring in about $5.5 million in revenue from operations.

“We’re anticipating a net loss of nearly $5 million,” said Lonnie Wood, the director of finance and information technology for the RSWA.

The difference is made up from contributions from Albemarle, Charlottesville, and the University of Virginia. Albemarle will pay $4 million, Charlottesville will pay $844,850, and UVA will pay $79,982.

Wood said the tipping fees for municipal solid waste will increase from $58 a ton to $60 a ton. That will generate an additional $200,000 in revenue, but there are many areas where revenues are increasing. Many costs are expected to go up.

“We do anticipate the bulky clean fill program is slowing down a bit and that will have a reduction in revenue of $125,000,” Wood said. “Recycling material sales and material sales are decreasing a little bit. A lot of that is due to the price per unit of fiber, plastic and [metal] cans.”

The RSWA’s capital improvement program includes funding for a new “convenience center” in northern Albemarle County as well as a new baling facility to handle discarded paper and cardboard. Unlike the Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority, the RSWA does not take on debt to pay for capital projects.

There were no speakers during the public hearing.

The Rivanna Solid Waste Authority was created in 1990 to oversee the Ivy Landfill, a facility that has since been closed and converted into a place where people can drop off all manner of items for disposal.

“At the Ivy Solid Waste and Recycling Center we continue to move along with about 220 tons per day which is about 50 percent more than we were receiving four years ago and six times more than we received back in 2018,” said RSWA Executive Director Bill Mawyer before the budget was adopted.

2018 is when work was completed on a transfer station giving Albemarle and Charlottesville residents a more local place to drop off unwanted items.

Mawyer showed a video of a tractor at the site running over a lithium battery causing an explosion and a small fire. That’s happened twice in the past month and the RSWA will implement a program to minimize the risk.

“It’s hard when we get all these bags of trash to go through and know whether people have put lithium batteries in there,” Mawyer said. “So we’re going to first try to offer them an option of a disposal site and see how that translates into budget and operational issues.”

Whatever program is developed will be handled by Phil McKalips, the RSWA’s solid waste manager.

“It is a big problem throughout Virginia and across the nation,” McKalips said.”Our hauling company is losing about two trailers a month fired, presumably from lithium batteries. But the day we had the trailer catch fire, there was a fire at the landfill in Spotsylvania County. A week before that, there had been one at Norfolk.”

There was also information about recent special collection days.

Mawyer said almost 400 cars came through an amnesty day for electronic waste products and over 1,400 people came through during a two-day hazardous household waste day.

“We received about 27,000 pounds of furniture and mattresses on that one day event and about 16,000 pounds of appliances on its one day event,” Mawyer said. “And 183 vehicles brought us tires.”

Another round of special collection days will be held in the fall. Visit the RSWA website for more information.

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