The deciding factor was a $3 million plus cost difference for the provision of Bega Valley Shire's main waste collection and disposal service for the five year contract period.

The decision followed an extraordinary meeting of Bega Valley Shire Council on December 16, at which council resolved to enter into negotiations with four prospective companies.

Council eventually awarded the contract at its regular meeting on Tuesday following examination of a detailed written background report by council's manager waste services, Bradley Nolan, and a subsequent written supplementary tender acceptance report from council's director engineering services, Doug Mein.

The tender acceptance report provided details of options and expected costs to council based on the provision of a single crate based service or an alternate co-mingled bin service.

The report said that both methods were expected to significantly increase recyclable collection volumes, although the co-mingle bin system was cheaper to provide and better from an occupational health and safety perspective.

Based on the amounts tendered and the evaluation criteria Mr Nolan recommended that council award its main waste collection and disposal contract to Edco (Watts Waste) and that council negotiate a contract with The Waste People for the receival and transport of all recyclable material to the Waste Service NSW facility in Moruya.

He also recommended that collection of recyclable products be done as co-mingled collection service using 240L bins from July 1, 2005.

Following the loss of the major contract, council's former major waste collection contractor, Bega based company The Waste People, is now expected to have to scale down its Bega operation.

This is despite its likely gain of the $1.38 million sub contract from council to provide the receive and transport service, and continuing to provide council's liquid waste collection service.

The contract provides for a regular weekly mixed waste 240 litre bin collection from commercial and rural properties, a fortnightly 240 litre bin collection from selected rural properties at Towamba, Burragate, Rocky Hall and New Buildings and a weekly 140 litre bin household mixed waste collection.

It also provides for fortnightly collection of a household 240 litre co-mingled recycling bin and monthly collection of a 240 litre green and organic waste bin.

The tender process included interviewing representatives from an initial four companies and assessment of weighted criteria in each tender by council's authorised four member evaluation panel comprising Mr Nolan and Mr Mein and two independents.

Supplemental Acceptance Report.

THE Acceptance Agreement Supplemental Report at council's meeting focused on the development of a contract for the acceptance of the kerbside collected and community recycling centre recyclable products as directed from the December 16 extraordinary meeting of Bega Valley Shire Council.

It involved the Bega Valley Shire Council and Eurobodalla Shire Council who have been working together for the past 12 months on the development of waste collection and recycling acceptance contracts to operate in the two Shires.

This resulted in the drafting of a single five year contract with two year option to commence on July 1, 2005 for the acceptance of recyclable material from the two shires.

The decision was based on a possible lack of contractors willing to accept the relatively small volume of product generated in each council area

The contract requested that the successful tenderer provide a materials recovery facility in Moruya to sort recyclables and transport them to market.

The development of a bulking facility in Bega was also required.

The prices submitted for Bega Valley Shire were only to include the development of the bulking station, transport and an acceptance fee, while prices received for Eurobodalla included the development of the larger materials recovery facility.