BROOKHAVEN — Lincoln County is the plaintiff in a lawsuit filed against Arrow Disposal Services Inc for breach of contract. The suit comes on the heels of the Lincoln County Board of Supervisors voting to approve filing a lawsuit against the waste collection company in a docket meeting Wednesday morning. 

ADSI served Lincoln County until Sept. 2024. Supervisors voted to award the garbage collection bid to Waste Management after service issues with ADSI which the County’s complaint argues particularly began in 2023 with “missed service, incomplete service and poor service proliferating.” According to the complaint, ADSI’s customer service telephone call-in system was ineffective for the citizens. 

Richard Urrutia, then CEO of ADSI, appeared before the board and apologized for the service and discussed ways the company would correct it in December 2023. 

Lincoln County Board Attorney Greg Malta alleged the company walked off the job in the last three weeks of its contract, breaching the contract. 

Malta stated the company additionally breached its contract when it sold to Meridian Waste without allowing the Board of Supervisors to approve the sale. This sale occurred before the contract expired. 

Lincoln County voted to withhold $119,000 from ADSI for having to pick up trash at a tripled rate per the contract last year. Lawyers representing Meridian Waste and ADSI appeared at a board meeting on Jan. 22 requesting the county to pay the $119,000. 

“They are complaining we didn’t give proper notice to cure the complaint. That is just going to be facts a court will have to sort through,” Malta said. “There is plenty of evidence showing otherwise. At multiple board meetings there were complaints.”

Malta said last week the lawyers for Meridian Waste and ADSI claimed they had documentation they collected trash where the county claims to have collected trash. He added he does not think their argument will bear out. 

ADSI was also supposed to collect all of its garbage cans. Lincoln County collected 400 cans ADSI abandoned but there are several blue ADSI cans floating around. 

As a result of the breach of contract, the lawsuit states Lincoln County is entitled to recovering the actual costs of remediating ADSI’s non-performance, actual costs of collecting, transporting and disposing of solid waste from residential collection points from Nov. 1, 2023 to Oct. 30, 2024. Additionally, the suit states the county is entitled to recovering the actual costs of collecting and disposing of equipment left behind by ADSI on the roadways of Lincoln County, court costs, pre- and post-judgment interest and any and all other damages the plaintiff may be entitled to.