CR & R submits lowest bid and is chosen by City Council to serve Newport Coast for 10 years.

NEWPORT BEACH — Waste disposal firm CR & R won a 10-year trash contract to serve Newport Coast in the council’s second try at choosing a hauler.

The Newport Beach City Council on Tuesday voted unanimously to award the $5.27 million contract to CR & R, the lowest bidder in a second round after the original bid award to Ware Disposal was revoked.

The city already has an exclusive contract with CR & R to sort city-collected trash from the rest of Newport Beach, city General Services Director Mark Harmon told the council.

“This is a company, again, that we have a good relationship with,” he said. “We have been working with them since 1996.”

The council in May gave the Newport Coast contract to Ware, which turned in the original lowest bid, but city officials decided to rebid the contract over concerns that they may have given Ware a chance to negotiate that other firms didn’t get. The city asked for more favorable terms in the second round of bids, but bids somehow came in lower.

CR & R Senior Vice President Dean Ruffridge said in a phone interview Monday his company was able to offer a lower price this time because of “a specialized program specifically designed for Newport Coast,” but declined to offer details at the time except that “it’s all about not depending on local landfills.” He didn’t explain how his company is now able to offer a lower price, and one competitor seemed to notice.

David Ross of Waste Management, which handles Newport Coast’s trash now and bid to keep the service, said the new low bid looked like it might be a lowball estimate. “It has all the makings of a bait-and-switch type of contract,” he said. “If it looks too good to be true, then it probably is.”

The city’s experience has shown the trash business can be a dirty one. Before the first bid award, someone anonymously mailed the city documents detailing the safety records of Ware and other haulers that bid for the Newport Coast contract.

Some observers have raised questions about contributions several haulers made to 2006 City Council campaigns, although the donations were legal.

This week, political consultant Dave Ellis, who worked on several council campaigns, pointed out CR & R hauls waste for several Orange County cities that failed in 2004 to meet a state recycling mandate.

The recycling data was included in a June 2006 Orange County Grand Jury report urging improvements in the county’s recycling procedures.

A CR & R spokesman said Monday it’s the responsibility of cities, not waste haulers, to figure out how to meet requirements for diverting the required 50% of waste from landfills.

City officials still must negotiate final contract terms with CR & R.