“The Quarter has never been this clean,” said Jill Wagner. She became inured during her three decades living along Bourbon Street to rat-infested, overflowing garbage cans and sidewalks stained with puke, urine and booze. Now, with a zesty lemon fragrance sprayed across the streets daily, “it smells like Disney World.”

A chorus of residents and business owners is heaping praise on the city’s so-called “Trash King,” Sidney Torres IV, and his company, IV Waste, for cracking the code to sanitary success.

The district has gleamed since Torres was given an emergency year-long contract last December to handle its waste management, they say. Tourists stumbling out of a Bourbon Street bar around sunrise on any given day can find IV Waste employees power-washing sidewalks, scooping up cigarette butts and spritzing streets with his patented “lemon fresh” cleaning formula.

But a judge on Wednesday allowed Mayor LaToya Cantrell to replace IV Waste at the end of July, over the objections of the city council. With a local management district insisting on Torres, this raises the possibility of rival collectors competing for the French Quarter’s garbage.

“Just because they like the other guy, that is not enough,” the mayor’s attorney Charles Rice told the judge, and he said there’s “no reason” to believe a different contractor would do worse.

An escalating legal battle over the trash

A state appeals court is scheduled to review in August who will ultimately earn tens of millions of dollars managing the French Quarter’s trash in 2026 and beyond.

At stake is the attractiveness of some of the most important city blocks in the country, residents say — New Orleans reports that more than 19 million visitors spent a collective $10 billion last year, and most visited the historic French Quarter.

In a city plagued by dysfunction including constant flooding, treacherous potholes and a massive jailbreak, Torres’ company has become a point of civic pride. The quarter is filled with signs in support of IV Waste.

“It’s not even in the same solar system — the service they provide versus what others provide,” said Danny Conwill, who owns an oyster bar off Bourbon Street and is suing the mayor to keep IV Waste. He recalls other trash collectors leaving “noxious garbage juices” and heaps of shrimp heads and oyster shells scattered about, leading to rank summer odors bad for business.

Torres, a real estate developer who began as a personal assistant to Lenny Kravitz and once hosted Justin Bieber’s 20th birthday party at his Bahamas resort, became a local celebrity and reality TV star after launching a trash company to clean up the city after Hurricane Katrina. He then sold it and waited out a non-compete clause before rebuilding his trash empire with IV Waste.

Officials say city will be paying more for less

After a competitive bidding process last year, the city began negotiating a $73 million contract with another local firm, Henry Consulting, to clean the French Quarter for at least the next five years. But before the deal was finalized, council members grew alarmed that the company did not seem to have the necessary equipment or subcontracts in place as Super Bowl LIX and the annual Mardi Gras celebrations loomed.

IV Waste then won an emergency contract to clean the French Quarter through 2025, and Henry Consulting sued, accusing the city of failing to uphold a valid contract.

The metastasizing litigation now pits an outgoing mayor with waning popularity against a feisty city council and state officials including the attorney general, with both sides slinging accusations of cronyism. Cantrell was elected in 2017 with the endorsement of Henry Consulting founder Troy Henry.

In April, Cantrell announced she was terminating the IV Waste contract early, and that Henry’s firm would take over. This new no-bid contract would cost $2.1 million more, with inferior results, sanitation director Matt Torri told the city council on Monday. He and other officials said Henry Consulting still doesn’t seem ready for the job.

Henry Consulting declined to comment to The Associated Press. Cantrell’s office told The AP that the city “remains committed to working with all parties to provide sanitation services to the French Quarter.”

Meanwhile, a new Louisiana law empowers the management district to appoint its own garbage collector, and the residents and business owners who run this state agency selected IV Waste. Torres said his company will keep taking out the trash, even if it means rivals go toe-to-toe on Bourbon Street.

“We’re going to do our job, and they can watch and learn,” Torres said. “The French Quarter can rest assured that we’re going to continue to clean.”

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Brook is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.