St. Paul is scrambling to figure out how to collect trash next month after the City Council blocked a garbage contractor's plans for a truck depot.

Mayor Melvin Carter said in a statement that the council vote "has plunged the city into crisis."

Council President Rebecca Noecker called that statement "alarmist."

The controversy started Wednesday when the council voted to block a new citywide garbage contractor from parking its trucks and building a natural gas filling station at a site on Randolph Avenue near W. 7th Street. The debate has pitted neighborhood advocates against the city's plans to centralize residential trash collection.

"By granting the appeal without a legal basis, the City Council is prohibiting a private company who legally purchased a property from using the site to provide essential garbage services to our city, jeopardizing our ability to provide trash services across the city after March 31, 2025," Carter said in his statement.

Noecker said in an interview that the hauler — FCC Environmental Services —has several other permits yet to be approved and has not yet started construction, just 10 days from the scheduled start of trash collection.

"FCC's lack of planning is not our emergency," she said.

How we got here

St. Paul's trash collection service was, until recently, the purview of contractors who make deals with residents — not a centralized city service.

The city's so-called "garbage wars" ended in 2024, after years of disputes over whether garbage collection should be a city service.

FCC, which won the contract to serve almost all of St. Paul, bought the Randolph Avenue property to store, dispatch and refuel its garbage trucks. Public Works Director Sean Kershaw said the trucks would be empty at that site after hauling the trash elsewhere.

Still, neighbors and the Fort Road Federation said they had want to see a less industrial use of the parcel and appealed the city planning commission's approval of the hauler's plans.

"Despite FCC's off-market purchase and plans for expansion, the site has been historically earmarked for mixed-use, housing and transit-oriented development," the Fort Road Federation said in a statement.

On Wednesday, the council overturned the planning commission's approval of FCC's plan to use the site to park and dispatch its garbage trucks. However, the company's recycling trucks can still use the location.

Trash crisis?

State law requires St. Paul to pick up garbage, but Carter's administration is flummoxed.

The city's plans for trash pickup hinged on FCC taking over most trash pickup on April 1, using the Randolph site for parking and dispatch.

"There is no immediate option to replace garbage service," City Attorney Lyndsey Olson said. But, she said, the city's contract with FCC specifies that the company will be responsible for trash pickup starting April 1.

"Yes, they have that obligation, and we also see there's a frustration here with the current circumstance of the council vote," Olson said. "They can't do the things they need to do to provide citywide trash service."

Now, Kershaw said, the city and FCC are trying to find in less than two weeks another lot for its garbage trucks.

"What we have to do is find a means to get that done because of the action the council took," Kershaw said.

"Delays in the site planning process put that plan in jeopardy."