Don't sell the county landfill

Everyone agrees that hauling Sonoma County waste out of county is not a good practice. The long haul of garbage to landfills out of the county is expensive, environmentally unsound and should be terminated as soon as possible. This may only be accomplished by reopening the Sonoma County landfill on Mecham Road. How to achieve this reopening is the big issue.

Public ownership of the landfill and aggressive recycling have been established policy in Sonoma County for decades. There is a relationship between landfill ownership and the success of recycling programs. Privately owned landfills make their money by maximizing the amount of material coming into the facility to be buried. The best public policy is to minimize the amount of material going to the landfill by maximizing recycling.

To achieve this goal the ownership of the landfill should not be answering to shareholders expecting a favorable quarterly profit report which is reliant upon having the most material coming to the landfill. Public ownership of the landfill guarantees that the environmental values of this community come before the profit requirements of corporate executives and shareholders.

The landfill is being viewed by the county as a burden. In fact, the landfill should be viewed as an asset. The three corporations seeking to buy the landfill certainly see it as an asset. All three companies are traded on the New York Stock Exchange.

Let there be no doubt these companies expect to make a profit on the Sonoma County landfill. To do so means each of them will expect to have a steady flow of waste into the landfill to be buried. Maximizing profit by maximizing material going into the landfill is contrary to the goal of our community to move toward "zero waste," the most ambitious environmental goal.

A certain risk is that a non-local corporate owner of the landfill may eventually need to import garbage from out of county to keep the profits at a level expected by shareholders. Both of these situations would be bad for Sonoma County.

The Monday Close to Home piece by Supervisors Tim Smith and Mike Kerns recited a number of important benefits which they associated with transferring ownership of the landfill to one of the three corporations now in private discussions with the county. The list included reduced greenhouse gas emissions, continued protection of ground water resources, continued composting programs, increased waste diversion and production of clean renewable energy by tapping the methane resulting from waste decomposing underground.

Reduced greenhouse gas emissions, protection of ground water resources, continued composting programs and expansion of the production of clean energy can and should occur under continued public ownership of the landfill. The suggestion that waste diversion or recycling will be increased by transferring ownership of the landfill to a corporation does not make sense. As explained, these NYSE corporations must satisfy shareholder expectations of profit. They make money when material is buried, not recycled.

The big question is how a NYSE-traded corporate owner could reopen the landfill and make a profit when the county cannot reopen the landfill and operate it successfully even absent a profit motive. In the end, ratepayers will underwrite the costs advanced by any private non-local corporate owner. The burden of these added costs will show up in the bills of ratepayers throughout Sonoma County.

The county should keep its asset and work toward reopening the facility. The policy of public ownership of the landfill is a good policy and should be kept in place. This is the only way to avoid an uncertain future where the public interest becomes subordinate to the interest of shareholders and corporate management.

Ernie Carpenter and Eric Koenigshofer are both former Sonoma County supervisors having each represented the 5th District; Carpenter from 1981-97 and Koenigshofer from 1977-81.