Garbage in, garbage out

Like most people, Alice Waco has a fleeting relationship with her trash.

On Wednesdays, she places what she does not recycle into a gray container and wheels it to the curb outside her home in Santa Rosa's junior college neighborhood.

Then she forgets about it, until it's time to wheel the empty bin back.

The question is: Where does that garbage go?

Many people will be surprised to learn, as Waco was, that Sonoma County's garbage is put into trucks and hauled to landfills across the Bay Area, including to a landfill near Livermore, some 90 miles from Santa Rosa.

These daily, long-distance journeys add up to millions of dollars in expenses for Sonoma County residents, an enormous amount of

manpower and thousands of miles logged on country roads and highways.

The trips also represent an environmental trade-off.

Taking trash out of the county makes it someone else's problem. But getting it there involves transporting it in pollution-spewing big-rigs.

Asked for her preference, Waco, a veteran antiwar activist whose home is adorned with large peace signs, seemed inclined to want to keep her trash closer to home.

"We're dumping our garbage on someone else," she said. "I feel terrible about that."

Since 2005, when the county closed the Mecham Road landfill west of Cotati, garbage has been loaded daily onto large trucks and driven to landfills near Novato, Fairfield, Pittsburg and Livermore.

County planners will be examining whether to maintain that practice or seek alternative solutions as they revise the county's long-term plan for waste disposal.

Currently, nearly half of the county's $38 million budget for refuse disposal goes toward transporting waste somewhere else, according to Susan Klassen, the deputy director of public works.

She said the county's preferred option would be for a private contractor to obtain the licenses and re-open the Mecham Road landfill. But not everyone is in favor of that proposal.

"If you live on Stony Point Road and Mecham, and all these garbage trucks are running by your house, you might prefer they head out on 101 out of county," Klassen said. "It all depends on your perspective. People tend to focus on what impacts them the most personally."

Trucking it away

Such concerns seem a distant afterthought in Waco's Santa Rosa neighborhood, where many residents pride themselves on their conservation efforts.

But any amount of trash will ultimately end up on a conveyor belt to a landfill in another county.

Mario Berrios, a driver for North Bay Corp., has been hauling trash from the junior college neighborhood for seven years. On a recent Wednesday morning he piloted the familiar green truck through the narrow streets.

The truck, which burns low-sulfur diesel and averages seven miles to the gallon, has two compartments, one for recyclables and the other for trash.

Berrios pressed one of two buttons to empty the can into the appropriate compartment. The actual lifting was coordinated by a joystick that Berrios toggled with the deftness of a video-game player.

"It used to be you had guys hanging off the back of the truck," said Mike Lockwood, a North Bay supervisor who tagged along with Berrios for part of the route. "It's gotten cleaner because we don't have to pick it up by hand."

The county's Central Transfer Station on Mecham Road where Berrios drove 30 minutes to unload the trash is a different story. There, hundreds of seagulls feasted on mounds of putrid garbage.

The rolling green pastureland surrounding the transfer station was a stark contrast, and a reminder of what has to be taken into account when planning where to locate sites for waste disposal.

The Mecham Road landfill was closed in 2005 after state regulators adopted stricter water quality standards for its operation. Before it shut down, the landfill was accepting more than 400,000 tons of waste a year.

Destination Suisun City

Roughly that amount is now being trucked out of county to privately owned landfills in Marin, Solano, Alameda and Contra Costa counties. But contracts with those landfills expire in 2010, and the county is exploring its options.

One plan calls for continuing to ship garbage out of the county aboard trucks or rail. The closest site is Redwood Landfill, 30 miles south of Santa Rosa in Marin County between Highway 101 and the Petaluma River.

Most of the county's garbage goes to Potrero Hills near Suisun City, about 70 miles away. Other sites include Keller Canyon near Pittsburg, a 77-mile drive, and Vasco Road Landfill near Livermore, 96 miles away.

Garbage trucks make about 65 round trips daily to each of these landfills.

Steve McCaffrey, a spokesman for North Bay, the county's largest garbage hauler, declined to say how much these trips cost in terms of fuel and other expenses, saying those figures are proprietary.

But based on the county's calculations, it adds up to millions of dollars annually.

Behind those numbers is the daily slog to get the job done. That's where men like Jesus Canela come in.

About two hours after Waco left her garbage at the curb, Canela drove a big-rig known as a "possum belly" beneath an open pit at the transfer station and waited as trash was pushed into the payload area.

It took a few minutes to load the truck with 46,000 pounds, or nearly 24 tons, of garbage. A quick weigh-in and Canela was off, connecting with Highway 101 and heading south toward Petaluma, where he took the Lakeville exit and headed east.

His destination was the Suisun City landfill. The route is a familiar one for the father of four.

Litter flies off trucks

Canela starts each day at 2:15 a.m. and makes four round trips daily to landfills across the Bay Area. He drives 400 miles every day, or roughly the distance from Santa Rosa to Los Angeles.

The former vineyard worker said he enjoys the work.

"It makes more money so I can give my family most of what they want," he said.

On the way to Suisun City, several pieces of trash wiggled free of the truck and floated away, littering the roadway where they landed.

Six plastic bags floated free of the truck on Highway 37 between Infineon Raceway and Vallejo. The roadway is bordered by natural wetlands.

The litter underscored another drawback to hauling trash somewhere else.

North Bay uses plastic netting to try and prevent trash from escaping. Tarps would be another option, but McCaffrey said they pose a greater risk of injury to drivers who could fall while pulling on them.

He called such litter "unacceptable" and said the truck Canela was driving has been taken out of service to examine the netting.

Back on the road, Canela activated the truck's hazard lights after entering Highway 80 near Vallejo. The truck was lumbering along at 30 mph up a steep hill as other vehicles whizzed by.

Cresting the hill, the truck gathered speed as it headed east toward Fairfield. Canela -- and the trash -- reached Potrero Hills at 11:20 a.m., more than an hour after departing the transfer station.

On a bluff overlooking the landfill, Canela backed the truck onto a platform and unhooked the cab. A large machine lifted the truck's bed, and the garbage spilled out, mixing with mounds of trash.

But Canela's work was not done. He had another hour-plus drive home before he could call it a day.

You can reach Staff Writer Derek J. Moore at 521-5336 or derek.moore@pressdemocrat.com.