Objection to private landfill grows

Sonoma County officials are delving deeper into proposals that would turn the county landfill over to a private operator, but objections are piling up.

During a public hearing Thursday, supervisors heard from local refuse companies, environmental group leaders and solid-waste experts who called for the county to retain control of the landfill.

It has been closed since October 2005 to private haulers because state officials say the landfill is leaking contaminants into ground water.

"If the county sells the landfill, any private owner will immediately become a financially powerful opponent to the public's need for recycling," said Alan Strachan, a developer who specializes in environmentally oriented design.

Strachan and Will Pier, an ecologist with the Sonoma Ecology Center and candidate for 1st District supervisor, called for the county and Regional Water Quality Control Board to negotiate a limited reopening of the landfill and for the county to repair the leakage.

Officials with North Bay Corp., the refuse company that handles about 70 percent of business in Sonoma County, said they favor a limited landfill reopening under county authority because bringing in a private company would essentially create a competitor.

"This decision will affect solid waste and recycling for the county for generations," said Steve McCaffrey, North Bay Corp.'s director of governmental affairs. "It is more than a real estate transaction."

McCaffrey said the company is about a year away from breaking ground on a facility near Standish Avenue and Todd Road that would handle 90 percent of garbage headed for the landfill.

North Bay president Jim Salyers said a reopened county dump could last longer once his company's facility is opened.

Former Supervisor Ernie Carpenter, now a community liaison for North Bay Corp., chastised administrators and supervisors for holding private talks with prospective bidders and for requiring officials in cities with garbage contracts to sign confidentiality agreements when discussing proprietary information regarding collection rates and trash flow.

"This is late in coming to the public," Carpenter said.

However, Mike Kerns, chairman of the Board of Supervisors, denied that talks exploring how a landfill operator would deal with the county's dump site are tantamount to negotiating a transaction.

"No decision has been made by this board yet, and it will depend on whether we are able to develop a request for proposals and whether we receive any proposals that meet our goals," Kerns said."

After the hearing, assistant county administrator Jim Andersen said officials would not release information about potential landfill bidders until they were ready to make a recommendation to supervisors. He declined to identify the companies under discussion.

"We are trying to keep the highest level of competition occurring in this process," Andersen said. "We believe it will drive up the competitors' interest and drive up the value of the county's assets."

Supervisors offered no other comments at the hearing, which sets the stage for the county to seek bids next month.

County officials began exploring landfill "divestiture" last November. County officials said transfer to a private operation would have to meet about a dozen criteria, including halting out-of-county trash hauling, prohibiting trash importing, avoiding the $117 million estimated cost of reopening and ensuring landfill employees find jobs with new operators.

The county plans to issue requests for bids in June and expects to be able to return to supervisors in the fall with evaluations of whether privatization will meet their standards, said Jay Jasperse, the county's project manager.

The discovery in 2003 of ground water contaminants attributed to the landfill resulted in a halt of construction projects that increased landfill capacity. In 2004, the county began trucking solid waste to Bay Area landfills, an option that has come under increasing criticism because of the considerable carbon emissions from garbage trucks on long hauls.

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