AUBURN – A damaged tailgate on a city recycling truck won’t affect curbside collections, but it will stop collections at Mid-Maine Waste Action Corp. for the next two weeks.
Auburn has three recycling trucks. One is kept at MMWAC to collect dropped-off recyclables while the others do the curbside collections around Auburn. Recyclables from all three trucks are taken to the Lewiston landfill for processing.
Public Works Director Bob Belz said the tailgate on one of the route trucks was damaged late in January when it caught on a catwalk at the Lewiston landfill. That forced the city to call the MMWAC truck into curbside service while the broken truck waits for repairs.
“We’ve learned that this is really a weak point for these kinds of trucks,” Belz said. The city is buying an entirely new tailgate assembly. That should arrive in a week, and crews will replace the damaged one.
Belz said he plans to repair and keep the damaged tailgate as a spare.
“If this ever happens again, we can swap out the tailgates and avoid any down time,” Belz said.
The new tailgate assembly costs about $7,000, he said.
In the meantime, officials at MMWAC are urging Auburn residents to use the curbside recycling program. Residents from other communities should hold onto their recyclables until the other truck returns.
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