Houston-based Waste Management recorded a net income of $247 million on $3 billion in revenue during the second quarter of 2009. During the same period last year, the firm recorded a net income of $318 million on $3.5 billion in revenue.

Of the decline in revenue, a company press release says “only $186 million of the revenue decline, or 5.3 percent of revenue, was related to the impact of lower volumes in the solid waste collection and disposal business. The majority of the decline was due to commodity impact related to recycling materials, fuel and energy sales, and to foreign currency translation.”

For the first six months of this year, Waste Management posted a net income of $402 million on $5.8 billion in revenue. During the same period in 2008, the company posted a net income of $559 million on $6.8 billion in revenue.

“We performed well in the second quarter, despite continued weakness in volumes and unexpected weakness in natural gas markets, which adversely affected the sales price for electricity from some of our Wheelabrator plants,” said David Steiner, CEO of Waste Management, in a press release. “We also had a negative impact of $0.01 per diluted share from development costs incurred in connection with our expansion of our waste-to-energy business.”