Wheelabrator Technologies, Portsmouth, New Hampshire, is contesting plans for Virginia’s Southeastern Public Service Authority (SPSA) to partner with a new waste services provider beginning in 2018.

According to a report in the Virginia Pilot, Wheelabrator sent a letter to the authority from its attorneys, Terence Murphy and Patrick O’Donnell of Kaufman & Canoles on April 11, challenge the authority’s intent to award a contract to Spartanburg, South Carolina-based RePower South. The article states, Wheelabrator’s attorneys also requested that further action be suspended during the protest.

Wheelabrator’s contract with eight municipalities and SPSE ends in January 2018. The company has been operating a waste to energy facility for the area’s trash since the mid-1970s according the Pilot. SPSA’s board voted in early April to award a contract to RePower South rather than renewing its its contract with Wheelabrator.

According to the article, Wheelabrator, provides city $3 million annually in tax revenue and water fees to the city of Portsmouth, Virginia, where its WTE facility is located.

RePower plans to build a mixed waste processing facility in Chesapeake, Virginia, to recover recyclables and produce biomass pellets. The authority also reportedly calculated tipping fees at the proposed facility would be more than $20 less per ton than the Wheelabrator plant, $56.52 per ton versus $78.72 per ton.

Wheelabrator contests the award on the grounds it violates the state’s procurement act. In the letter from its attorneys, Wheelabrator claims the authority failed to apply the evaluation criteria it listed in its request for proposal when making the selection and gave RePower 25 points for experience, which was only five points less than Wheelabrator even though Repower has no operating plant like the one it is proposing. According to the article, the letter claims “the authority also added evaluation criteria that appeared to favor RePower and were not in the request for proposal.”

Wheelabrator letter states, “The proposed award is not an honest exercise of discretion, but rather is arbitrary and capricious and not in accordance with applicable state law or the terms and conditions of the RFP,” the attorneys’ letter states.

Another point of contention for Wheelabrator, according to the firm, is RePower failed to post a $2 million bid bond that was required in the request for proposal.

And while SPSA sought to charge Wheelabrator “prohibitively high prices” to dispose of the company’s residual ash from the WTE process, in its landfill in Suffolk, Virginia, Wheelabrator’s attorneys say the authority would accept residual garbage from RePower in the landfill for less than market price.