Countywide : City Recycling May Trash Regional Plan

If cities build their own recycling centers as Ventura is doing, the Regional Sanitation District must scrap plans for a single big center in which it has invested $150,000 and 18 months of staff time, the district manager said Tuesday.

Manager Wayne Bruce told county supervisors that the district is likely to scale back its goal of building a $40-million center that would recycle up to 70% of the trash in western Ventura County.

Cities are required by law to recycle 25% of their waste by 1995 and 50% by 2000. That’s making them less eager to contribute trash to a big center, Bruce said.

“They seem to be saying, ‘Why should we be out there trying to recycle 70% when the state law requires only 50%?’ ” he said.

Supervisor James Dougherty said the five western cities will lose their options for the regional center if they do not commit to it soon.

“The bottom line is that if you don’t have the majority of the western waste stream, you won’t have a project,” Dougherty told Bruce as a warning to Ventura, Oxnard, Port Hueneme, Camarillo and Ojai.

Unless it gets 1,000 tons of trash a day, the center won’t be worth building, Bruce said. That means it needs most of the western cities, although it could still operate without Ventura.

The project may have to be redesigned to sort less trash, Bruce said. But he said he hopes to have a center operating by 1993 in Saticoy or Oxnard, where four locations are under study.

Ventura is creating its own program and has invited other cities to join. It will handle 125 tons to 200 tons a day, according to Sheri Eiker, city recycling coordinator.

“The city needs to make decisions based on what’s best for the city now,” Eiker said. “We are going forward with this because we can get this up quickly and in a cost-effective manner.”