Welcome to Waste Expo 2009 in Las Vegas. As a show attendee, you are one of nearly 40 million people who will visit the region this year. (Incidentally, this is not Las Vegas proper. The city is actually three miles north of the Convention Center and the Las Vegas Strip, which are in unincorporated areas of Clark County.)

The Las Vegas Strip, as you know or will soon discover, sells fun: gambling, food, entertainment and conventions. Not surprisingly, officials here take selling fun very seriously.

For example, when President Obama criticized companies that accepted bailout money and then threw parties in Las Vegas, Oscar Goodman, the mayor of Las Vegas, called a press conference to take the president to task. He also sent Obama a letter complaining that his remarks had harmed the tourist business in Las Vegas.

Part of the business of selling fun in Las Vegas is cleaning up the mess that the visitors leave behind. Last year, Clark County's visitors, residents and businesses generated 2.2 million tons of solid waste. Republic Services of Southern Nevada, a division of Phoenix-based Republic Services, cleaned up after them.

Vegas' Sanitation Department

Republic acquired its Southern Nevada division, formerly Silver State Disposal, in 1997. The relationship between Silver State/Republic and the jurisdictions in the region date back to the 1960s. Since that time, Silver State/Republic has held exclusive franchises for residential, commercial and permanent roll-off/industrial waste collection and disposal in unincorporated Clark County and the cities of Las Vegas, North Las Vegas and Henderson, all of which are in the county.

The company serves, more or less, as the sanitation department for these jurisdictions and is responsible for building and maintaining the infrastructure necessary to meet its contractual responsibilities. Unlike cities and counties in the eastern United States, which usually maintain their own sanitation departments, jurisdictions in the West typically negotiate long-term contracts with private firms for waste management and recycling services.

Generally, Republic's contracts in Clark County say the firm will pick up residential trash twice a week and recycling every other week while providing drop-off sites for hazardous household waste and electronic waste.

One of the more interesting provisions in the contracts requires the company to allow residential customers to dump their trash free of charge at one of the company's three transfer stations. “This policy was instituted back in the 1970s to reduce desert dumping, which was a big problem,” says Bob Coyle, vice president for public affairs and government relations for Republic Services of Southern Nevada. “The policy has worked well. Desert dumping is still a problem, but not as big a problem.”

Republic Services' contracts with jurisdictions in the region have terms of 20 years. Why so long? That's because Republic Services has made huge capital investments to construct the infrastructure necessary to manage the region's waste.

For example, Coyle estimates that the three transfer stations constructed and owned by Republic Services in Clark County would cost as much as $150 million to replace. Other capital components owned and operated by Republic Services in the region include the Apex Regional Landfill in Clark County and a recycling plant in North Las Vegas.

Those capital investments, of course, are in addition to the spending required to acquire and replenish fleets of 220 residential trucks, 104 commercial trucks and 90 roll-off trucks. The residential and commercial trucks have McNeilus bodies on Autocar chasses. The roll-offs use a variety of body manufacturers, all on Autocar chasses.