Acme Transfer owner Paul Nelson could be in the trash business as early as next week.

The Regulatory Commission of Alaska has approved Nelson’s application to open a trash collection facility at his 1 Mile Haines Highway shop and offer trash collection outside city limits.

"All I’ve got to do is build a sorting table, get some scales and a container and we’re ready to go," Nelson said Tuesday.

In granting Acme its service certificate March 29, the commission effectively opened Haines’ garbage market to competition.

Acme will now compete areawide for self-haul customers with Haines Sanitation, which since the late l960s has been Haines’ only state-certificated refuse disposal facility.

Acme will offer pick-up service in the borough outside the city. Haines Sanitation will continue to hold exclusive rights for trash collection inside the city.

Haines Sanitation, which holds a 10-year contract with the City of Haines for garbage pick-up services, lost a third of its customer base after doubling prices three years ago. The company accepts self-hauled garbage on Saturday mornings. It began shipping garbage south in 1999 after closing its landfill to general use.

In issuing the decision, commissioners wrote that the price increases and limited self-haul hours has increased illegal dumping of trash on public land.

"It is evident that a significant fraction of the community disposes of refuse in ways that are not optimal for the long term...If we make choices available, a greater proportion of the population may choose to dispose of refuse responsibility rather than continuing to dump refuse in public land," the commission wrote.

In a companion ruling, the commission denied Haines Sanitation’s request to be rate-regulated. The city required the company to make the request for regulation as a condition of its 10-year contract.

The company had been exempt from state rate oversight since l993, when the then-Alaska Public Utilities Commission agreed to allow the city to set garbage rates instead.

Commissioners said the decision should enable Haines Sanitation and Acme to compete fairly. "Acme will be exempt from rate regulation. HSI should likewise be exempt from rate regulation to have a level playing field," the ruling reads.

Recycling will play a large part in Acme’s operation, Nelson said. He said at least two employees will assist customers in sorting up to 16 categories of recyclable paper, plastics, and metals from refuse brought to the facility.

He said he plans to work with non-profit Haines Friends of Recycling. "Ideally, we be in the same facility, but that’s still all up in the air at this point. The less we have to ship out the lower my costs will be, so we’ll encourage people to recycle."

What can’t be recycled will be compacted for shipping south in containers identical to the ones Haines Sanitation uses at it’s FAA-road facility. Nelson said customers who won’t recycle will pay more. "The people who don’t want to sort are going to pay the price."

Nelson plans to open his facility 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday, Friday, and Saturday. He said he’ll use a small flatbed if needed to provide pickup service to rural customers. "First of all, I don’t now if anybody out there wants it."

He said he’ll continue Bigfoot Auto’s glass recycling program, with eventual plans to grind recycled glass into sand for sale. Nelson said he’s also starting the permit process to open a landfill for inert material on his property at 33 Mile.