Sep. 15--With the prospect of San Francisco trash being dumped in Yuba County's Ostrom Road landfill seen as more likely, residents in nearby Wheatland may not be in favor of the idea but would seem to have little recourse to stop it.
The reality of the situation dawned after word late last week that the San Francisco Department of the Environment made preliminary plans to award Recology Inc. a contract to take the city's trash to the Ostrom Road site. The landfill is owned by Yuba-Sutter Disposal Inc., a Recology subsidiary.
The contract would pay Yuba County more than $1.5 million annually in host fees, to take on about 400,000 tons of San Francisco trash annually over a dozen years, beginning in 2015. The San Francisco Board of Supervisors must approve the contract, but aren't expected to do so until early next year.
In the meantime, Recology has to get Yuba County's approval for a conditional-use permit to build a rail spur line for delivering the extra trash loads.
Board chair John Nicoletti said the full board will discuss what could otherwise be a technical staff-level item because he recognizes the level of interest among some quarters in the county.
"But we have to remember there will always be landfill-use needs," he said, noting the Ostrom Road site can handle far more trash than could be generated by nearby cities and counties.
"This will provide us with rate stabilization into the future, and that's rate stabilization on garbage bills for folks that are on fixed incomes," Nicoletti said.
Wheatland-area Supervisor Roger Abe and Wheatland Mayor Enita Elphick did not return calls for comment Monday.
County staff said last week the company's application for those changes was rejected because of incomplete information, and would still require an environmental impact report or a mitigated negative impact declaration, then a public hearing and planning commission approval.
County supervisors will also weigh in.
Recology spokesman Adam Alberti said his company is working on the application, but noted the dump itself is already capable of handling extra trash.
"We're looking forward to a full and comprehensive review of our proposal among the county leaders and the community at large," Alberti said.
A Wheatland resident who led a group that sued over the dump's expansion in the late 1990s said county supervisor opposition is the best hope for opponents of the plan.
"The bottom line is we told you so," said Richard Paskowitz, whose group, Yuba Group Against Garbage, sued YSDI, saying the company always planned to eventually take garbage at the Ostrom Road site from other cities. "What they said and what they did were two different things."
The suit was ultimately dismissed by the 3rd District Court of Appeal in Sacramento in 2004. Paskowitz said the suit's dismissal convinced him that trying again over the San Francisco deal would be pointless.
But he's still concerned about the landfill's effects on groundwater and visual aesthetics, and hoped supervisors, in reviewing the use permit, would take such issues into consideration.
"It's power politics to the detriment of the community," he said, adding supervisors and Recology should acknowledge adding trash to the dump will shorten a lifespan previously expected to conclude in 2066.
But Nicoletti said some of those concerns are misplaced. Most of what San Francisco will send to Yuba County is compostable green waste, for which the county already has a thriving program sending compost to local agriculture, he said.
And as opposed to landfills established in the 1960s, he said, the Ostrom Road site, opened in 1995, is more of a large plastic bag liner barring seepage into the ground.
People opposed to the dump should remember it's one of the most highly regulated businesses in the county, and it's already permitted to handle more trash than it does, he said.
Contact Appeal-Democrat reporter Ben van der Meer at 749-4709 or
bvandermeer@appealdemocrat.com
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