The Garbage Headlines in the News

Battles over garbage have been in the news lately.

Those battles are going on now in Chula Vista in the South County and have been going on for some time in the entire city of San Diego. But the two battles are not the same.

The one in Chula Vista is a fight over wages for workers employed by Republic Services, a nationwide company, where a strike by the Teamsters union workers in Boston has literally spilled over into places like Chula Vista.

It was only a few years ago that the same thing happened and garbage was overflowing in front of homes for several weeks.

In the city of San Diego the battle over garbage is over what city residents have to pay for the city to pick up their garbage.

The San Diego City Council this week okayed a controversial plan to replace hundreds of thousands of trash and recycling bins — many of them new or only a few years old according to the Union Tribune report — and send the $65 million bill to customers.

And of course this move comes just as the city of San Diego begins levying its first-ever trash pickup fee.

Union battles happen all the time and local government leaders often make decisions that local residents oppose.

But for the thousands of people affected by what’s happening in the cities of Chula Vista and San Diego, they probably look at it as a pile of garbage.

(Photo reporting partner 10News)