On Friday, Jan. 31, the same day that Lincoln County filed a lawsuit against Arrow Disposal Services Inc. (ADSI), the City of Brookhaven did the same. The Board of Aldermen approved the action in a special-called meeting on Jan. 29. 

The suit accuses ADSI of breach of contract, beginning in 2023, when “the quality of services provided to the citizens of the City by ADSI began to decline severely, with instances of missed service, incomplete service, and poor service proliferating.” The same issues were raised by the City to ADSI in a formal letter in February 2024. 

The suit alleges ADSI “made no significant improvements to the services provided” and “re-fused to provide customer service reports as required by the contract.”

The performance of the waste collector became “especially poor” in August and September 2024, at the end of the final term of the contract. Complaints were made by individual alder-men, city administration, and city employees “on a daily basis.” But no appreciable improvement was made by ADSI. 

“During September 2024, ADSI abandoned its responsibilities to the City entirely and breached the contract,” the suit states, “leaving more than 4,482 City of Brookhaven homeowners garbage carts without service. Again, complaints to ADSI by the City went unaddressed.”

After being notified by Joe Honea in early September that ADSI had abandoned its routes and would no longer provide services, the City began collecting trash instead. The City also was left to collect the abandoned 95-gallon carts “littering the roadways throughout its service area” with “great difficulty at its own expense.”

The City withheld payment on ADSI’s final invoice of $55,514. According to the lawsuit, the City also incurred at least $69,988.80 in costs — 10 Solid Waste Department employees, a front-end loader, and three boom trucks employed in trash collection five hours each day for 16 days, plus a City employee spending approximately three hours daily over 20 days manning calls complaining about ADSI’s lack of or poor service. 

The suit, which requests a jury trial, was filed in the Circuit Court of Lincoln County against defendants ADSI and its new corporate owner, Meridian Waste Mississippi.