by Erin Miller
West Hawaii Today
emiller@westhawaiitoday.com
Wednesday, February 20, 2008 9:28 AM HST
A Big Island business owner is hoping to help county neighborhoods clean up -- by offering a free junk car pickup service.
"The county has an abandoned vehicle and derelict vehicle amnesty program (but) they limit the amount of cars (picked up) per property," said Mike Allen, owner of Big Island Scrap Metal. "We've had a lot of requests."
The company recently purchased three car carriers and can now schedule pickups at residents' request. The islandwide program will be ongoing, Allen said. Already, he's visited subdivisions where hundreds of derelict vehicles sit, but the owners can't afford to tow the cars to be scrapped. A tow from Ocean View, for example, might cost $250 or more.
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That he can profit off the scrapped metal helps his company afford to offer the free towing and pickup as a public service, he said.
The county program is slowed by having a county employee first come to a property to confirm the vehicle is there, then sending a tow company to retrieve the vehicle, he said.
"We can make an immediate impact," Allen said, adding that his company has the ability to remove as many as 400 or 500 vehicles in a month. "If they're really responsive, which I think they will be, within a year we could clean up most of the subdivisions."
Trash must be removed from the vehicles before towing, and the vehicles must be accessible for the tow truck pickup service.
Big Island Scrap Metal also will make available containers for loose scrap metal, metal car parts and appliances, and can also work with businesses and residents to dismantle and move big trucks, large machines and heavy equipment.
Bobby Jean Leithead-Todd, director of the county's environmental management department, said she didn't have an opinion about the announcement. She noted that the company holds the county's scrapping contract and receives a fee from the county for scrapping abandoned and derelict vehicles. The county pays a different contractor about $90 per vehicle for towing; about 1,100 vehicles were collected between July and December, according to county records.
Part of the contract includes an agreement that if scrap metal prices reach a certain level above the price when the contract was created, the company holding the contract would share profits with the county, Leithead-Todd said. Prices are rising, she noted.
"Very soon, instead of paying, we would have revenue from the abandoned vehicles," she said.
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