Arizona company seeks to clean up, reopen Mecham Road facility; critics say play isn't eco-friendly

The sale of the Sonoma County landfill site, as well as four trash transfer stations, is headed for a contentious public hearing Tuesday, one certain to stir impassioned feelings about the junk we throw away.

Supporters say selling the now-closed Mecham Road dump that requires trash to be trucked out of the county is the only solution to the landfill?s environmental problems that makes financial sense.

Opponents counter that the dump is a valuable repository for all the county?s waste and shouldn?t be handed over to a private company that will lack a profit motive to encourage recycling.

?There is a lot of money and politics and power involved in garbage,? said Michael Anderson, chairman of the county Solid Waste Management Task Force. ?We have an educated population that is ashamed to be shipping our waste out of county and we?re not quite sure what to do about it.?

At issue are the details contained in 700 pages of a proposed contract between the county and Republic Services, a nationwide trash processor based in Phoenix.

Under the proposal, Republic would reopen the landfill, which the state said needed to be closed or cleaned up because of the potential for groundwater pollution, in exchange for paying the county $2.7 million in annual royalties and for a 20-year commitment from cities to cart their trash there.

Dozens of local companies involved in trash hauling, recycling, methane gas production and reuse of industrial materials have a financial stake in the outcome, Anderson said.

The $70 million cost of fixing the liner surrounding the landfill and preventing toxics from leaking outside the site is far more than the county can afford, said public works deputy director Susan Klassen. The county has only $10 million in closure funding, she said.

?We have heard the message that the public wants an in-county landfill and one that reduces greenhouse gas production,? Klassen told supervisors at a hearing this summer.

Since the state Water Quality Control Board ordered the landfill closed or cleaned up in 2004, most residential and commercial trash has been hauled by truck to dumps in the East Bay and Solano County.

Many environmental groups are lining up against the sale even though the 65 daily truck runs to out-of-county dumps contribute to greenhouse gas emissions.

Conservation Action, the Climate Protection Campaign and the Sierra Club have issued a joint call for rejection of the agreement ?because the deal undermines this community?s long-term environmental and economic goals.?

They say that the greenhouse gas emissions from trash truck trips are less of a concern than control of emissions produced by solid waste processing at the dump, which they argue is not fully addressed in the agreement. They also contend the proposal provides no incentives for increased recycling and allows residential disposal rates to climb over the years.

?The deal does not encourage recycling or waste diversion and that is not the direction the community wants to go in,? said Denny Rosatti of Conservation Action.

Most of the 28 members on the county?s 35-year-old task force oppose the sale because ?this is a resource owned by the public and we will lose most of our control over it,? Anderson said.

Opposition is also gelling in some rural communities over the possible shutdown of transfer stations in Sonoma, Guerneville, Healdsburg and Annapolis that currently serve as convenient places for local residents to drop off their trash. The proposed contract allows Republic to close all but one of the stations after five years if minimum trash flow requirements aren?t met.

The opposition, however, has lost a major ally with a decision by North Bay Corp., which holds most of the trash-hauling contracts in the county, to drop its objections. Although the company initially submitted a bid to operate the landfill, it later proposed a long-term franchise agreement for trash hauling in the unincorporated parts of the county. That proposal is to be decided by supervisors Tuesday.

?They are staying out of it,? said attorney and former county supervisor Eric Koenigshofer, who represents North Bay.

While support for the landfill sale hasn?t attracted extensive backing, some civic leaders are urging divestiture as the only reasonable path to pursue.

Ross Liscum, a Realtor and former member of the state water quality control board, said county and municipal governments will never be able to fund or secure bond financing for landfill cleanup, given the economic outlook.

?If it has to be cleaned up and the county is in an economic crisis that is not going away for a long time, you only have one choice and that is to privatize it,? said Liscum, who served on the water board at the time closure was ordered. ?To me, the primary focus is on environmental cleanup, and divestiture is the only thinking out of the box that gets us there.?

Koenigshofer said he has changed his mind on the landfill sale because local efforts don?t have the financial resources to both clean up the landfill and reopen it as a business.

?I used to embrace the philosophy of being locally owned, but in terms of the wrench that cost throws in, all bets are off,? Koenigshofer said. ?We?d like to reopen the landfill, but it might not be realistically attainable.?

Because the landfill sale involves a real estate transaction, approval by at least four of the five supervisors is required for approval. So far, all five supervisors have raised concerns about different aspects of the proposed agreement and are unlikely to reach a decision.

The hearing is scheduled for 2:30 p.m. Tuesday at the Board of Supervisors chambers.

You can reach Staff Writer Bleys W. Rose at 521-5431 or bleys.rose@pressdemocrat.com.