• When the high temperature or wind chill factor is forecasted to be only 10 degrees or below between 6 a.m. and 6 p.m.
• When the roads are not passable due to the accumulation of freezing precipitation.
• When the low temperature or heat index is forecasted to be 100 degrees or higher between 6 a.m. and 6 p.m. our crews will take extended breaks which could lead to your carts not being serviced until later in the day.

The health and safety of our employees is our top priority, and the scenarios above pose a serious risk to the well-being of our Solid Waste and Recycling employees.

A disruption could be any of the following:

• Trash and recycling carts will not be emptied until the following day.
• We may start our services earlier in the day, take extended breaks during the day, and/or work later into the evening to avoid extreme weather conditions.
• We will run only one route each day which means your trash and recycling carts will be emptied into the same truck.

Road conditions are certainly a factor we consider. The Streets Department works around the clock during freezing rain, sleet, or snow events to ensure the arterial streets and bridges are safely passable for you and emergency vehicles. However, neighborhood streets are neither pretreated nor plowed during these events which can lead to hazardous conditions for our employees. If it is determined that the risk to our employees or personal property is too high, we will need to suspend service until it is safe to resume.

Our standard operating procedure is to service your route the next day if it is safe to do so. If your carts are placed at the curb and your service is disrupted before being emptied, leave the carts at the curb. This will minimize the risk of slips and falls which could jeopardize your personal health. It also ensures your carts will be curbside and emptied when we can safely resume our collections, which as previously stated, could begin earlier than a normal day.

It is our goal to run separate routes to ensure your trash and recyclables are offloaded separately as you intended. However, there will be times when we need to operate a single truck to collect the contents of both carts. When this is necessary, we will provide you with this information so you can decide whether to place your recycling cart at the curb, hold on to your recyclables until the following week when normal operations resume, or take your recyclables to The M.e.t.

We will communicate disruptions on the city website, social media channels, email notification system, and CodeRed, our emergency alerting system as soon as decision is made. Please make sure you are following the city and receiving our messages. If you are not registered to receive emergency notifications from us, you can easily and quickly do that at brokenarrowok.gov/alerts. Our emergency notifications are sent via phone or text message, depending on your selection.

Inclement weather is always fluid with very little certainty, so unfortunately, we cannot say that by a certain time of day we will have made a decision. What we will do is provide you with notice and details as soon as possible after we determine that weather conditions will not be suitable for our employees to safely carry out their duties.

Yes. As stated previously, our standard operating procedure is to shift your service to the next day. Despite your carts not being emptied on your normal day of service, we will complete each route when it is safe to do so. This will ensure your carts are emptied.

As you know, our service collection days are Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. To accommodate for a city holiday observed on a service collection day, we shift services to the next day following the holiday. For example, if a holiday falls on a Tuesday, Monday customers are not impacted and will receive service on Monday. Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday customers will have their service shifted to the following day – Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, respectively.

If inclement weather forces a disruption on your service that has already been shifted, we will shift one more day. As previously stated, please stay connected with the City so you are aware of these shifts.

When necessary, because of a holiday, our crews will collect the trash and recycling of Thursday customers on Friday. In the event inclement weather forces that Friday service to be shifted to Saturday, we will collect for half the day due to the hours of operation at the landfill where we offload household garbage.

There are a few days each year, that the landfill is closed and not available for us to dump our customers’ trash. Those days are: New Year's Day, Thanksgiving Day, and Christmas Day, in which we are not in service as well. However, if the landfill closes due to inclement weather, we must suspend service also. When the landfill is operational again, and the conditions in Broken Arrow are safe for our employees, we will resume service.