GOOD SHEPHERD MEDIA INVESTIGATIONS

Free Carts, Then Fees: Santa Clarita’s Trash Bill Is Up a Third Since Burrtec Took Over

The City blames a landfill closure. The contract promised extra recycling and green-waste carts at no additional cost. Residents with large lots are now paying for every one.

By Good Shepherd Media Investigations  |  Lead reporter: D. Collins

When Burrtec Waste Industries began hauling Santa Clarita’s residential trash on July 1, 2023, the standard three-cart home paid $28.92 a month, billed quarterly at $86.76. Today the same home pays $38.55 a month, or $115.65 a quarter. That is a 33 percent increase in two and a half years.

For homes with more than three carts, the change is far larger. Burrtec’s rate sheet effective January 1, 2026 charges $6.19 a month for each additional recycling cart and each additional organics cart. A Sand Canyon household with ten green-waste carts and four recycling carts carries twelve “extra” carts. Under the published rates that household owes $112.83 a month, or $338.49 a quarter, for service that began at $86.76.

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What the contract says

Under the previous hauler, Waste Management, extra recycling, green-waste and manure carts were free; the company’s 2020 welcome sheet for Santa Clarita customers said so in writing.

The franchise agreement the City Council approved for Burrtec on June 14, 2022 appears to say two things at once. Section 10.05.2 says additional recycling and organics carts are provided “at no additional cost.” The rate exhibit attached to the same agreement lists monthly prices for those same carts. Good Shepherd Media has asked the City which provision governs, and on what date and by what vote the charges were switched on.

The landfill explanation

The biggest single increase came on July 1, 2025, when the base rate jumped from $29.87 to $37.39. The Council approved it 4-0 on May 27, 2025, with Councilmember Jason Gibbs absent. The stated reason was the closure of Chiquita Canyon Landfill, which stopped accepting waste on January 1, 2025. City staff reported that dumping at Chiquita had cost $37.50 a ton and that the alternatives cost more than $90 a ton.

That explanation fits garbage. It is harder to fit to the blue and green carts. Recyclables are trucked to a sorting facility, not buried. State law requires organics to be kept out of landfills. Residents tell Good Shepherd Media that both City staff and Burrtec cited Chiquita Canyon when asked why extra recycling and green-waste carts now cost money. Chiquita Canyon did accept some green waste for composting; whether any of Santa Clarita’s went there is a question the City has not yet answered.

Who was supposed to see it coming?

A contractor is expected to know its own costs. A landscaper does not arrive at the job and add a surcharge because the mower needs gasoline. The question for Santa Clarita is whether anyone at City Hall asked Burrtec, before signing a ten-year agreement, what would happen if its landfill went away.

In fairness to both parties, the record on timing is mixed. Federal regulators date the underground reaction at Chiquita Canyon to about May 2022, roughly a month before the Council’s vote, and the first air-quality violations were not issued until May 2023. At the time of the award the landfill held a county permit running to 2047. But that same 2017 permit already scheduled a steep cut in the landfill’s daily tonnage for 2025, and by Burrtec’s first day of residential service the odor crisis was public knowledge. The agreement lets Burrtec ask for an “extraordinary” increase for events beyond its control, and it did so within days of the first date the contract allowed.

City Manager Ken Striplin, whom the agreement names as its administrator, told the Council that Burrtec “did open their books” to an outside consultant. The City has not published that consultant’s name or report.

The City’s share

The City is not a neutral bystander to the rate. Under the agreement Burrtec pays City Hall 10 percent of its gross revenue, plus fixed annual fees of several hundred thousand dollars. When residents’ bills rise, the City’s franchise income rises with them.

What we have asked for

Good Shepherd Media has filed a Public Records Act request for the 2022 proposals and scoring, the full agreement and exhibits, Burrtec’s rate request and the consultant’s review, disposal invoices, franchise-fee payments, correspondence between Burrtec and City Hall about Chiquita Canyon, and campaign-contribution disclosures by councilmembers. We have sent written questions to Mr. Striplin and will publish the City’s answers. Burrtec has also been invited to respond.

The City’s position, as stated in its 2025 staff report, is that the closure was outside Burrtec’s control, the costs were independently verified, and Santa Clarita’s rate remains below neighboring jurisdictions.

Have a Burrtec bill with extra-cart charges? Good Shepherd Media wants to see it. Contact the newsroom through goodshepherdmedia.net.

Sources: City of Santa Clarita franchise agreement with Burrtec (June 14, 2022) and Council agenda reports of November 12, 2024 and May 27, 2025; Burrtec single-family rate sheets (2023 and 2026); Waste Management Santa Clarita welcome sheet (2020); U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and South Coast Air Quality Management District records on Chiquita Canyon Landfill; The Signal; KHTS.