LA Landfill Beyond Waste

Even with the closure of Puente Hills Landfill the market is over saturated with capacity and is extremely competitive. Southern California has two billion cubic yards of remaining state permitted disposal capacity that could easily last the next 100 years at current disposal rate. But is the state's landfill too plentiful and too cheap? By Evan Edgar In 1960 Los Angeles mayor, Sam Yorty rode into office by offering convenient waste collection from a single can. Once there he also banished smoky backyard burn cans and separated food waste collections. 'Garbage Can Sam' made it easy to clean up the city and haul the trash out to the Hills. That was over fifty years ago. On 1 November 2013, the Puente Hills Landfill closed forever, ending Sam Yorty's legacy. The authorities say they will go back to collecting food waste separately. There is talk of a big waste to energy plan, the franchising of commercial waste and squeezing out the small Armenian haulers. It's also been said that the waste-by-rail transfer station to the Mesquite Landfill in the desert is dead for now, and that Eagle Mountain Landfill lost the landfill race to a tortoise. LA is at the garbage crossroads once again. The city of Los Angeles and the state of California are at the crossroads where AB 32, greenhouse gas reduction strategies, and AB 341, mandated commerical recycling and higher recycling goals, could propel the state towards energy independenceand green jobs. Too Much Capacity? Los Angeles is straddling the rail between the City's RENEW LA plan of advanced thermal technologies and Los Angeles Sanitation District (LA SAN's) plan of mixing out-of-County waste-by-rail exportation with conversion technologies. As state-permitted remaining landfill disposal capacity has increased to over three billion cubic yards, the demand for disposal has dropped from 42 million tons in 2006 to 29 million tons in 2012. The capacity glut has led to new pricing strategies at a time when emerging technologies are trying to compete. Mesquite Landfill is ready to receive waste-by-rail and by-truck. The state oversight agency, CalRecycle, approved a Permit Revision where up to 4000 TPD (of the permitted 20,000 TPD) could be trucked in from LA to Imperial County instead of being transferred only by rail. The landfill capacity at Mesquite will also increase from 970 million cubic yards to 1.1 billion yards, tipping the state-permitted available capacity to over 3 billion cubic yards. Mesquite picks up 130 million tons of capacity, while Puente Hills will be leaving 10 million tons of remaining permitted capacity on top of the hill, or about five years of capacity. A new tiered volume discount was introduced in January 2012, offering discounted tipping fees as low as $28.43 per ton, to attract the disappearing tonnage, in which tonnage increased from a low of 5150 TPD in 2011 to 7000 TPD in 2012. It has been a race to the bottom in landfill pricing as technology is now available to raise the bar. Even with the closure of Puente Hills landfill today the market is over saturated with is extremely competitive. Southern California has 2 billion cubic yards of remaining state permitted disposal capacity - that could easily last the next 100 years at current disposal rates. Public facilities LA SAN reports the ability of private companies to 'internalise' collection and landfill operations by utilising their own capacity to maximise revenues, but the public sector landfills is stepping up and fighting for revenue. A significant portion of the Mesquite Regional Landfill is fenced in and staff have been specially trained in an effort to protect the endangered Desert Tortoise which lives in the area El Sobrante Landfill has over 131 million yards of capacity and Sunshine Canyon has about 100 million yards, and could easily suck up Puente Hills tons. Further, the Orange County Landfill system with over 165 million yards of capacity in waiting and the San Bernardino County Landfill system with over 172 million yards of capacity have entered the market. Meanwhile, the Chiquita Canyon to the north is smart to hold the line on pricing and wait for the market to stabilise later. With both the private and public sector stepping in to offer cheap landfill capacity, the long anticipated $450 million LA SAN waste-by-rail system has been shuttered for now. The 'Weapons of Mass Disposal' found at El Sobrante Landfill Orange County landfills and San Bernardino County landfills, have derailed LA SAN's plan and could even thwart the development of organic processing facilities. Organising organics LA SAN has done a great job developing mega-landfills, waste-by-rail systems, transfer stations, biosolids co-composting facilities, and exporting mechanisms, but as a region has failed to adequately plan for the handling of green waste and the possibility of managing co-collected residential green waste and food waste. Puente Hills has been using 720 TPD of green waste as Alternative Daily Cover (ADC) as landfill-based landfill diversion to cover a landfill, totalling over 4.4 million tons since 1988. LA SAN has evaluated the absorption capacity within the county and in surrounding counties, and claims there is sufficient transfer facility capacity within close proximately of the Puente Hills Landfill. Its conclusion is confirmed by the Green Waste Management Resource Guide issued in April 2013 where there are more than 50 facilities listed in Los Angeles County alone to process and transfer green waste. The Guide claims that there is 6155 TPD of chipping and grinding capacity and 9676 TPD of composting capacity in the southern California five-county region. If true, the myth of composting capacity scarcity in Southern California has been debunked. LA had planned to dump a majority of its green waste on surrounding counties as agricultural land application. Ventura County passed an ordinance establishing standards pertaining to land application of mulch, as LA has dumped too much contaminated, green waste on their agricultural lands. Kern County too has been dumped on for too many years. Valued compost markets have been developed in these counties, and dumping green waste corrupts the progress in setting quality standards for sustainable and organic farming practices. CalRecycle has just released proposed regulations to set standards for land application of green waste to protect the organic markets that have been developed. Food and Green Wastes Using green waste for ADC or land application blocks the ability to add residential food waste to residential green waste to generate compost and/or anaerobic digestion feedstocks. Costs for covered aerated static pile composting systems in a complex air district could go up to $50 per ton, while AD could be $60 to $80 per ton. With the LA SAN waste-by-rail system operational at $80 per ton as planned, the future of green waste and food waste could have been local AD facilities competing against a waste-by-rail system or a waste to energy facility at over $100 per ton. Instead, viable sustainable alternatives are fighting against the weapons of mass disposal with cheap landfill gate rates. At a time when technologies such as AD and covered aerated static pile compost systems are being scaled down and commercialised to develop the local infrastructure, the landfill glut has bypassed the scarcity myth. Discounted landfill pricing is being offered at a time when new organics processing options are launching, potentially stymieing their further development. Conclusions Landfills are at a tipping point. The remaining capacity translates into about 1.5 billion tons of garbage that can be buried - around the same as the quantity that has already been buried to date. Garbage Can Sam Yorty got rid of backyard burning, and got us on one can collection with the advent of sanitary landfills. Sam Yorty did a great job in his time and in his place. Sam Yorty promoted a vision that closed out over 50 years later, leaving his legacy truly in place. We are now stuck with a lot of cheap landfill capacity, as the city claims to be looking at alternatives Beyond Waste. With the closure at the once-largest landfill in the U.S., the city is toying with waste to energy and the County is mothballing the 20-year-in-the-making waste-by-rail system. The city needs a new Sam Yorty, a man who can take a vision that could last the next 50 years in this time and in this place. The city should be promoting local sustainability by converting organics into energy and by using recyclable feedstocks for domestic manufacturing. Evan W.R. Edgar is the principal of Edgar & Associates, Inc., a lobbying and environmental engineering firm based in Sacramento and is the director of Regulatory Affairs for the California Refuse Removal Council (CRRC).