Despite widespread rumors and concerns, Troup County has no plans for mandatory garbage pickup in the unincorporated area, County Manager Mike Dobbs said Thursday.

He said the county hasn’t proposed “to do anything different than what we are doing with our collection of garbage, including the convenience centers.”

“The only time we have ever discussed garbage pickup was about a year ago when [Public Works Camp] Warden Dexter Wells came into one of the County Commission meetings with a presentation about about our sanitation service. But there are no current plans whatsoever. If there were, they would be openly discussed at our meetings.”

Despite the assurances, the owner of C&C Sanitation Service at 2236 Greenville Road says he’s worried.

“I have heard a lot of people talking about it in the county and it would be devastating for our business,” Dan McAdams said. “The way it works right now is fine. People in the county can either take their trash to a convenience center or opt for us to pickup for $15 a month. They are talking about possibly charging people $20 a month.

“… Every time we turn around, the city is wanting to come into our yard and do our jobs,” McAdams said.

The city currently has contract with the county to haul garbage from the 12 convenience centers to LaGrange’s landfill for $20 per ton, Dobbs said.

“In my many years here, I have never seen the city try to go into the county’s backyard before,” Dobbs said. “This is nothing but rumors.”

A letter to the editor from Troup County resident Sonny Weldon echoes McAdams’ concerns.

“Citizens of unincorporated Troup County need to wake up,” Weldon said in the letter to the Daily News. “With the Meriwether landfill coming, the city of LaGrange is scheming with some of the Troup County commissioners to force mandatory garbage pickup on us at a cost of close to $20 per household each month. The city knows that the Meriwether landfill will take a large share of their current business due to LaGrange’s exorbitant tipping fees. The scheme to keep the city’s landfill afloat calls for the city to do all the garbage collection in the county.”

City Manager Tom Hall said such concerns are without merit.

“This is the county’s business,” Hall said. “We already have a multi-year contract with the county, but that’s all as of now. This is all so premature and unfounded.”

But he said Troup has asked the city to identify the costs associated with curbside pickup “if we or someone else did it.”

It would be quite an undertaking with more than 400 miles of roads in the unincorporated area, said LaGrange Councilman Bobby Traylor.

He said LaGrange provides backyard pickup at no extra cost for the elderly and disabled, but many such people in the unincorporated area live 500 yards or more off the road and “I don’t know how it would work, no matter who does it … You’d have to have special small trucks to go down driveways.”

Weldon and other residents said they’re concerned about the future of convenience centers.

“The county has also begun an initiative to close some, if not all, convenience centers,” Weldon said. “…Mike Dobbs is blaming dilapidated equipment as a reason for possibly closing some of the centers.”

Dobbs acknowledged that improvements and repairs are needed at the centers, but it’s part of the county’s sanitation budget for the next three years.

“We just had a meeting before Christmas with all part-time convenience center workers,” Dobbs said. “They were told that there are no plans to close any of them at this time. We are going to continue with the convenience centers and I invite anyone with concerns about the future of our sanitation service to come to my office and sit down with me and talk about it.”

Commission Chairman Ricky Wolfe said the county is just “looking at what our various options are,” since 11 convenience centers need significant upgrades.

“I feel responsible environmentally to see if recycling is something in the future we want to do,” he said. “We’re doing some now, but relatively little to what we could be doing.”

Recycling, along with the proposed biomass plant, will help preserve precious landfill space, Wolfe said, noting that landfills are expensive to get permitted.

Kenneth Thompson can be reached at kethompson@

lagrangenews.com or (706) 884-7311, Ext. 228.