Many Nashville residents will again see delays with their trash pickup. Metro Water Services says people may have to wait one to two days before the issue is resolved.

The city will temporarily take on some collection duties from longtime contractor Red River Waste Solutions in hopes of completing pickups by Saturday.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, Red River has had a string of trash collection delays that have been attributed to staffing shortages, and in some cases the company has missed pickups altogether. The issue resurfaced in December when the city temporarily paused its curbside recycling program to help pick up the  slack. Metro recycling trucks were reassigned to trash collection. Now, in this latest dilemma, Metro is stepping in to take over three of Red Rivers routes.

The Texas-based company entered bankruptcy to reorganize itself last October, and the city is hoping the court will intervene.

On Monday, Nashville Mayor John Cooper tweeted, “We’ve now filed a motion in bankruptcy court requesting that Metro be allowed to assign some of RR’s routes to another provider to ensure timely collection of trash.”

In response to the motion, Red River filed an objection that stated, “After failing to obtain Red River’s consent to modify the parties’ agreement, Metro now improperly asks this Court to allow it to strong-arm a modification of the contract by throwing around terms such as ‘ongoing health crisis,’ ’emergency situation,’ and ‘health hazard’ to describe its ordinary contractual dispute with Red River.”

The city’s contract with the agency is set to expire in 2024.

When Metro had to step in to cover for Red River’s unacceptable performance, we prepared for this to happen again. We’ve now filed a motion in bankruptcy court requesting that Metro be allowed to assign some of RR’s routes to another provider to ensure timely collection of trash. https://t.co/u1Qo8Ummps

— John Cooper (@JohnCooper4Nash) February 14, 2022