[StBernard] SDT hands over documents to St. Bernard for review

[Westley Annis]

SDT hands over documents to St. Bernard for review

06:11 PM CST on Friday, November 21, 2008

Lee Zurik / Eyewitness News

WWL-TV

SDT Waste and Debris owner Sidney Torres handed over hundreds of pages of
documents, trying to clear his name with elected officials in St. Bernard
Parish, included are commercial landfill billings which Eyewitness News had
requested from SDT almost a month ago.

It is those billings that the St. Bernard Parish President Craig Taffaro
said would help show if his parish was paying for trash not generated by his
residents but by those commercial customers instead.  It is something that
Taffaro says has become even more clear in the short amount of time he's
spent reviewing the documents.

"When you look at the overall growth, SDT's overall commercial growth was
several hundred percent, but it didn't coincide with the overall volume that
also tracked," said Taffaro.
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Eyewitness News obtained the numbers from St. Bernard through a public
records request.  They show that in May of 2007, residences in St. Bernard
Parish generated 1,300 tons of trash, SDT commercial customers 3,100.

But eight months later, for St. Bernard parish that number rose to 12,000
tons, and even though SDT's commercial business had increased, its
commercial tonnage decreased from May by about 600. 

That same month, SDT didn't bill the City of New Orleans for any residential
garbage.  Torres said that trash should have been billed to his commercial
account.

In the documents given to the council SDT shows in April of 2007, its
commercial business increased by 70 percent from the previous month but the
commercial tonnage didn't, it actually went down.

And in June, when SDT's business increased 58 percent, its commercial
tonnage again decreased by 328 percent.

"There's a lot of things he (Torres) does in his commercial accounts that
would skew that for the archdiocese schools. He gives away a free month of
collection," said St. Bernard Council Chair Wayne Landry.

Landry says he has spent the last week crunching numbers with SDT and thinks
the company owes about $300,000 to the parish.

"Everybody is pretty comfortable with what they are seeing," said Landry.
"I keep going over to make sure we haven't missed anything."

The council's numbers are much lower than what Taffaro had previously
thought SDT had owed, around $3 million, although that number could change
after he finalizes the review of SDT's documents.

Also SDT has hired criminal defense attorney Pat Fanning.