Railroading Garbage to Desert : Trains Gain Favor as Trash Disposal Option

After a six-hour train trip that began at Pasadena’s Amtrak station and ended on the Mojave Desert more than 200 miles away, Tom Harvey, a councilman from the San Gabriel Valley city of La Verne, gazed across the horizon and was delighted to find an unbroken stretch of empty space.

No houses. No businesses. No people. “Just an incredible expanse of nothing,” he enthused. “Dead flat desert.”

An Ideal Spot

The sort of place, he reasoned, where you could put a dump without spoiling the environment, depressing property values and upsetting neighbors. The sort of place, in other words, to send trash trains, a favored candidate among some of the experts who are trying to figure out what to do with Los Angeles County’s garbage.

The Santa Fe Railway Co. and its partner in a trash-by-rail venture hooked up a special train to take Harvey and other San Gabriel Valley city officials to a potential dump site near Amboy, midway between Barstow and the Arizona border, in San Bernardino County.

A week later, the Mine Reclamation Corp., another company that hopes to rail-haul one-third of Los Angeles County’s garbage, flew the same group of city officials to remote Eagle Mountain in Riverside County to show off its dump site, an abandoned iron ore mine.

Plans for these competing projects are in their infancy, but rail-haul advocates envision a network of stations throughout Los Angeles County where thousands of tons of trash would be loaded onto rail cars daily, with trains moving to the desert far beyond present dumps, reached by truck, that are fast reaching capacity.

The trains would do their hauling at night, empty their loads, then return for more trash in an endless chain. The waste would be shipped in sealed, odorless containers. At the disposal site, the containers would be loaded onto trucks, driven short distances and emptied. The contents would either be burned or buried in a landfill.

On the East Coast, Conrail began hauling trash from New York and New Jersey to landfills in the Midwest last year and is shipping 700 tons a day. Conrail executives are forecasting $100 million in annual revenue from trash trains in 5 to 10 years.

Ralph Tufenkian, vice president for corporate projects for Western Waste Industries Inc. of Carson, is certain that trash will be rolling out of Los Angeles County in rail cars before long. “There is no doubt,” he said. “It’s going to happen.

“We can no longer rely on landfills that are close in,” he said. It costs so much to build a landfill with today’s required environmental safeguards that a site must last for decades. “You don’t want to get a spot where all of a sudden you’re going to have someone build houses next to you,” Tufenkian said.

About 48,000 tons of trash are generated daily in Los Angeles County. Nearly all of it is trucked to 10 public and private dumps, which are rapidly filling up.

At the request of an association of cities in the San Gabriel Valley, where more than half the county’s trash winds up, the Sanitation Districts of Los Angeles County last fall invited private companies to submit rail-haul proposals. From 10 responses, the Sanitation Districts staff selected four for detailed evaluation. They are:

- A proposal by Western Waste, one of the nation’s five largest trash companies, to ship 12,000 tons of trash a day to a remote, unspecified location.

- A joint-venture proposal by Santa Fe and the nation’s largest waste company, Waste Management of North America Inc., to haul 6,000 tons of trash a day from pickup points at El Segundo and Commerce to Amboy. Phil Beautrow of Waste Management said his company would dig a hole 30 feet deep near Amboy and stack trash 50 feet above ground, replacing the flat terrain with a low hill. Capital cost is estimated at $85 million, including $25 million for the landfill. Santa Fe and Waste Management, in a separate proposal, also have offered to haul 6,000 tons of trash from loading stations in the San Gabriel Valley to Amboy.

- A plan by Mine Reclamation Corp. to rail-ship 7,000 tons of trash daily from the San Gabriel Valley to Eagle Mountain, midway between Indio and Blythe. The company has also made a separate, unsolicited offer to the city of Los Angeles to rail-haul 5,000 tons of trash a day.

A joint-venture proposal by Santa Fe and International Technology Corp. to take 6,000 tons of trash a day to a recycling and waste incineration plant to be built at Adelanto or Needles, both in San Bernardino County. Described as a high-tech solution, the plan would combine an aggressive curbside recycling program with further trash separation and recycling in the desert. Waste that could not be recycled would be processed into fuel

for factories and a waste-to-energy plant. A landfill would be built to receive the plant’s ash.

Roberto Frulla, senior vice president of International Technology, said the cost would be in the hundreds of millions of dollars, but the project could be financed with tax-exempt bonds and come under public ownership, guaranteeing future disposal availability at controlled costs.

Stephen R. Maguin, head of solid waste management for the Sanitation Districts, said, “There is no doubt that the technology is there to efficiently load trash on trains, haul it out and dump it someplace. There’s no magic about that. (The question) has never been one of technical feasibility. It’s been one of economic and political feasibility.”

A study by the Southern California Assn. of Governments last year concluded that San Gabriel Valley homeowners who were paying $9.35 a month to have their garbage picked up and trucked to local dumps would pay $12.50 to $14.50 if their trash was hauled to the desert by rail.

Maguin said the big question is whether close-in landfills will be able to expand and stay open or run out of room and be closed. As long as these dumps remain available, trucking trash there is the cheaper alternative, he said. But if officials wait until local dumps shut down before taking an interest in rail-haul, trash could be piling up in the streets before the trash trains start rolling, he said.

Maguin estimated that it will take three years for a company to get disposal facility permits and build a rail-haul system. Before making huge investments, rail haul companies want to be assured that they will receive the trash disposal business from Southland cities.

The staff of the Sanitation Districts will complete its analysis of the rail-haul proposals within a month and report on such aspects as financial feasibility.

Proceeding on Their Own

Meanwhile, San Gabriel Valley officials are proceeding on their own. City Councilman Harvey said his committee has examined the Amboy and Eagle Mountain projects in detail and will recommend one of them at a meeting of the San Gabriel Valley Assn. of Cities on Sept. 21.

Harvey said the strength of the proposals convinces him that rail-haul will work.

“It really is the answer,” he said. “In the San Gabriel Valley, we can’t burn the trash. Recycling? We can’t do enough of it. The trash has got to go someplace.”

But some desert residents do not want that “someplace” to be near them.

San Bernardino County Supervisor Marsha Turoci, who lives in Hesperia and represents a large desert area, said that when she heard that Amboy was being offered as a potential dump site, she was outraged. “The smoke was coming out of my ears,” she said.

Turoci said Los Angeles County should handle its own garbage, not send it to another county’s desert. “We’re not receptive to it at all,” she said.

Jon Mikels, another San Bernadino County supervisor, said he would be willing to discuss trash disposal with Los Angeles officials only in context with other problems. “If San Bernardino County is going to assist in the solution to Los Angeles County’s trash problems, then Los Angeles County should be prepared to help in the solution of some of our problems,” he said.

Harvey said he is not discouraged by negative reaction in San Bernardino County.

‘Know They Are Sane’

“If the San Bernardino folks were saying from the get-go, ‘We can’t wait until you bring your trash out here,’ I would worry about those folks.” he said. “Now, I know they are sane.”

Harvey said no one expects desert communities to accept trash unless they gain a benefit, perhaps jobs or revenue from a dumping fee.

At least two desert cities, Adelanto, near Victorville, and Needles, on the Colorado River, are interested in rail-haul projects.

Adelanto Mayor Edward Dondelinger said his city lost a bid for a state prison because the proposed site, next to George Air Force Base, was too noisy, but a trash processing plant might provide the jobs and economic boost that he is looking for. The Needles City Council has voted to pursue the concept of a trash plant because the project could create 350 jobs.

In Riverside County, the Board of Supervisors has approved a memorandum of understanding with Mine Reclamation Corp. that declares the county’s intention to permit the disposal of Los Angeles County waste at Eagle Mountain if environmental studies show that the iron ore pit can handle the trash safely.

Kaiser Steel gouged three large pits in Eagle Mountain when it mined iron ore from the 1940s to 1982. Now it has leased 8,000 acres to Mine Reclamation Corp., which proposes to fill one pit, which is a mile and a half long and 1,500 feet deep, big enough to take 16,000 tons of trash a day for 100 years.

Gary Kovall, senior vice president and general counsel of Mine Reclamation Corp., said his company’s plan would restore the mountain by filling it with trash. “It’s a huge disturbed area that we are going to undisturb,” he said.

Riverside Supervisor Patricia (Corky) Larson said the county would gain $10 million to $30 million a year in dumping fees from the Eagle Mountain project, but her support for it depends on the evidence that emerges from environmental studies.

Eagle Mountain is near Desert Center, where there are scattered farms of asparagus and jojoba beans, a few trailer parks and gas stations, a cafe and some houses built around two man-made lakes and a golf course. There is a state prison about 20 miles away and a privately run prison for parole violators that occupies buildings in Eagle Mountain that were abandoned when the mine closed.

Too Small for Lotto

Ken Statler, who owns McGoos, a bar and mini-mart on Rice Road, said closure of the mine, which employed 1,800 workers, cut the area’s population to less than 1,000. The population is so small, he complained, that the California Lottery will not put a Lotto machine in his store.

Statler said he has tried to entice industry to Desert Center by writing letters to companies. “I’ve tried to lure a lot of people, but nobody wants to come out here to manufacture anything,” he said. “So we’re going to have to take just whatever we can get.”

Statler said the dump “could be a big asset to the community as long as it doesn’t bother the water table.”

But at the Chuckawalla Market and RV Storage up the street, owners Duane and Carol Johnson said putting millions of tons of trash into the mine is certain to contaminate the water supply, which is dependent on wells. They believe that the daily explosions to loosen iron ore during mining operations left fissures that would allow pollutants from the dump to seep into ground water.

Landfill developers, however, say that they will install a clay liner as a safeguard, that the bottom of the pit is bedrock and that there is no danger to the nearby ground water.

The dump would employ 150 workers, but Trigg Rourke, a 75-year-old retiree, said local residents would not want most of the jobs. “I don’t think anyone wants to go in and slop garbage in 120-degree heat,” he said. Besides, he added, the area is not suffering economically. “This is not a depressed area,” he insisted. “It’s a low-population area.”

Mine Reclamation Corp. is planning to spend $10 million on environmental studies and other activities during the permit application process. The expenditures include a commitment of $440,000 to help the Desert Center area maintain the golf course and other public facilities. The company has also organized an advisory committee of local residents, offered funds for an independent environmental analysis of its project and begun sending a newsletter to residents.

Loading Facilities

In addition to persuading desert areas to accept garbage from Los Angeles, rail-haul promoters also must find areas in Los Angeles County where the trash can be loaded. Mine Reclamation Corp. has already run into opposition to its proposed loading stations in City of Industry, Irwindale and La Verne, but says it will keep looking for acceptable locations.

The loading stations, which could include facilities for recycling to reduce the volume of trash shipped to the desert, could be enclosed and hidden from view, but there would be no way to hide the hundreds of trash trucks that would come to unload every day.

One alternative would be to keep the trash trucks going to existing landfills and load rail containers there, and then truck the containers to rail yards, but that would add to the cost. Harvey said that on his train trip to Amboy, he saw a number of sites in Los Angeles County that could serve as loading stations. “There are good sites that work technically,” he said. “That isn’t the issue. The issue is politics.”

Michael Martin, manager of public affairs for Santa Fe, said rail lines could easily handle the traffic of trash trains, and there are sites on the desert that are ideal for disposal. But, he said, dumps are about as popular as nuclear power plants. “Nobody wants one in his back yard,” he said.

Revenue and jobs can be strong incentives to desert communities, Martin said, but “to say you have the world’s biggest garbage dump in your jurisdiction” is not a boast that everyone will want to make.

Proposed Trash Train Routes Of the four proposasls to ship trash by train to desert locations, three have been tentatively mapped. Depending on the route used, trash trains would travel through Los Angeles, Orange, River1936286821 Proposals 1. Southern Pacific and Mine Reclamation Corp. Proposed disposal sites: Eagle Mountain 2. Santa Fe and Waste Management Inc. Proposed disposal sites: Adelanto, Amboy 3. Santa Fe and International Technology Corp. Proposed disposal sites: Needles