This article was written by BenitoLink intern Meghan Lee. Lea este artículo en español aquí.
San Benito County’s Sanitary Ad Hoc Committee is set to recommend a transfer station or resource recovery center to the Board of Supervisors at their March 25 meeting. The recommendation comes after a years-long debate over how to handle the county’s waste in the future.
The agenda materials for the meeting estimate the county’s only landfill, the John Smith Road Landfill (JSRL), has 13 years’ worth of capacity left before it must close. In November, voters passed Measure A, which makes it much harder to build or expand landfills within the county.
The proposed transfer station would sit at the entrance to JSRL, while a proposed resource recovery center would sit across John Smith Road.
Resource recovery facilities are a newer concept in waste management. Although they can take different forms, such centers are primarily meant to reduce the amount of waste going into landfills by recovering any materials that can be repurposed. A 2001 publication from the California Integrated Waste Management Board lists multiple examples of resource recovery facilities within California that have been in operation since the 1990s.
At their Jan. 14 meeting, the Board of Supervisors voted to eliminate a number of its committees, including the Landfill Committee, which had wrestled with issues surrounding JSRL in recent years. Supervisor Kollin Kosmicki, who favored eliminating the committee, said the decision came because the county’s approach to waste management has moved away from a focus on landfills.
“The scope of that committee has really changed, and we now have an ad-hoc that’s focused on, basically, exploring solutions that may be landfill or may be transfer stations,” Kosmicki said.
Celina Stotler, the county’s Integrated Waste Management manager, agreed with Kosmicki.
“Currently the county’s Sanitary Ad Hoc Committee and staff are researching and exploring the county’s options,” Stotler said.
Supervisors Dom Zanger and Angela Curro are on the Sanitary Ad Hoc Committee. Stotler said that the committee would be seeking direction from the board on future steps.
Landfill Background
According to the county’s website, around 80% of the landfill’s waste comes from Santa Clara County—JSRL has taken out-of-county trash since 2010. At that time, the Board of Supervisors saw a dramatic decrease in the county’s revenues following the 2008 recession and the county was facing a budget deficit. Officials estimated the deal with Santa Clara County would be worth $29.5 million over the course of 59 years, or the life of the landfill.
The then-Board of Supervisors consisted of Margie Barrios, Anthony Botelho, Robert Rivas, Jerry Muenzer, and Jaime De La Cruz. To balance the county budget, the board unanimously voted to increase the landfill’s waste intake.
One of the provisions from the 2010 contract was that JSRL would eventually stop taking out-of-county waste if the landfill and the county could not come to an agreement on an expansion. Once experts determined the landfill only had 15 years left of capacity for in-county waste, it would stop receiving out-of-county waste if the expansion was not approved.
The landfill reached its 15-year capacity limit in 2022, which was when JSRL was petitioning the county for approval to expand. An expansion would enable the landfill to resume receiving out-of-county waste and add 29 feet to its height.
One vocal group opposed to the landfill expansion was Don’t Dump on San Benito County, some of whose members lived in the Santana Ranch neighborhood. Planning for that neighborhood began in 2009 and it continues to be developed to this day. The neighborhood is three miles from the landfill.
Don’t Dump on San Benito launched a Facebook page in 2021, around the time Waste Connections began petitioning the county to expand JSRL. On that page, the group cited concerns over groundwater contamination, the resumption of taking out-of-county trash, road damage from truck traffic and air and noise pollution as reasons for its opposition to the expansion.
In January 2024, The county’s planning commission denied JSRL’s conditional use permit and environmental impact report. JSRL needed both to begin working on the expansion project. JSRL filed an appeal, but later withdrew it. This effectively ended work on the landfill’s expansion.
Measure A, which passed by 54% in November, makes it even harder for the county to expand the existing landfill or develop new ones. The measure limits the Board of Supervisors’ power to reclassify agricultural, rural and rangeland without voter approval. It allows the board to continue to appropriate public land for a variety of uses without voter approval, except specifically for landfills.
Meanwhile, Measure A does not specify whether the board can appropriate public land for transfer stations without public approval.
The BenitoLink Internship Program is a paid, skill-building program that prepares local youth for a professional career. This program is supported by Monterey Peninsula Foundation AT&T Golf Tour, United Way, Taylor Farms and the Emma Bowen Foundation.
You must be logged in to post a comment.