Kodiak Assembly to vote on overnight landfill bear hazing and a garbage rate increase

The Kodiak Island Borough Assembly will vote Nov. 5 on hiring a contractor to patrol the borough landfill overnight and haze bears away, at a cost of up to $250,000 for the first two months.

The contractor would be on site at the landfill on Monashka Bay Road from 6 pm to 8 am Monday through Saturday and around the clock on Sundays, using only non-lethal methods, according to the meeting packet. The borough told bidders it has no portable lighting to lend.

Borough staff say they can't run the landfill day to day and keep up with the bears too.

After 60 days, the contract could go month to month for up to a year, at about $120,000 a month. A full year could come to roughly $1.45 million. After the first 60 days, the borough told bidders, the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation "will provide primary direction on how to proceed."

The bears have been a problem for more than a year. A state inspection found the landfill out of compliance with rules requiring that bears be kept out, and the state approved a bear management plan July 15. Bears kept getting in anyway.

In August, a state wildlife biologist warned the borough could be fined for negligently feeding wildlife. Nate Svoboda, the Fish and Game area biologist in Kodiak, said at an August work session that some "strongly food-conditioned bears" had been in the landfill for more than two years.

When the borough keeps them off the fresh trash, the bears dig into garbage that's three to four years old, and some that's eight to 10, Borough Manager Aimee Williams told the Assembly in October. At the same meeting, a resident said a brown bear had licked the glass of his family's front door.

The state has asked the borough to notify Fish and Game every time a bear is seen in the landfill. The contractor would fill out the records the bear plan requires.

Two firms bid. Wilderness Safety Services outscored S+S Enterprises 76.33 to 63 out of 100, mostly on price. Some borough documents call the winner Wildlife Safety Services; the contract says Wilderness.

The same night, the Assembly will hold a public hearing on moving $300,000 from the solid waste fund to a new perimeter fence around the landfill.

The Assembly will also vote on a new five-year garbage contract with Alaska Waste, which already collects Kodiak's garbage and was the only company to bid. "We don't have a lot of room to actually negotiate on prices because they're our only bidder," Williams said at a Sept. 10 work session.

Starting July 1, 2027, the monthly rate for a residential roll cart would rise from $50.96 to $53.51, about 5%. Commercial rates would rise more. A 2-yard dumpster emptied once a week would go from $346.68 to $416 a month, up 20%, and the largest containers would rise by more than a third. Bulk item pickup would go from $20 to $50.

Alaska Waste's proposal says inflation has climbed about 24% since 2020 while its Kodiak rates rose about 11%, and it calls Kodiak's disposal costs "among the highest in the nation." Starting in July 2028, rates would adjust each year for inflation.