NORTHAMPTON - Major changes are in the works for the citizens of Northampton and how they will dispose of their trash after the Northampton landfill closes. To deal with this closure, the mayor has created a Solid Waste Task Force consisting of two city councilors, six representatives for the Board of Public Works (two engineers, two BPW members, one solid waste coordinator and one state Department of Environmental Protection advisor), one Board of Health member and four members of the general public.

This task force has been given less than four months to recommend a municipal trash disposal plan which will affect every Northampton household well into the future.

With only four residents (one third of the committee) on this task force, one can only wonder if the decisions made will be in the best interests of city households.

For years the landfill has been a "cash cow" for the city by bringing hundreds of thousands of dollars into the city coffers through the Department of Public Words and its Solid Waste Enterprise Fund. Expenditures from this fund have covered a wide range of items, some questionable, and have been exempt from City Council oversight.

With this cash flow coming to an end, the city DPW appears to be heading toward minimizing its role in Northampton's trash disposal future as demonstrated in the composition of the Solid Waste Task Force and the guidance it has been providing.

Now, the BPW faction of the task force (which is the majority) is pushing for requiring all residents to pay for curbside pickup of their trash by a single trash hauler. The Locust Street and Glendale Road drop-off centers (recycling and trash) will be closed or have their hours reduced to the point of becoming inconvenient as an incentive to make the new system work.

If that happens, residents will no longer have the freedom to choose how they dispose of their trash. Gone will be incentive to recycle as much as possible since a standard-sized container (packed or only half full) will be picked up at the curb for a fixed price. Instead, there will be the inconvenience of remembering "your day" for pickup, finding a place to store the rolling container (and making it bear or raccoon proof), dealing with vacations and holidays, finding a flat spot during the winter so your trash doesn't blow down the street and having another monthly bill to pay.

And then there is the issue of cost. For seniors on fixed incomes, small households, conscientious recyclers, "green" consumers and lower-income residents, the yearly cost of disposal will easily double, triple or go even higher.

There is also the issue of the trash that will not fit in the city's mandated container. Who will take it, where will it go and how much will it cost?

Unless Northampton residents get actively involved in this decision they can say good-bye to stickers and "pay as you throw," say good-bye to free recycling, say good-bye to the Pedal People and say "hello" to big business handling all of their disposal needs ... for a price.

Richard Guzowski of Florence was chairman of the city's 1989 Recycling Committee, which created the pay-by-stickers system of trash disposal.