City Officials Are Seeking to Organize a Recycling Program for South County

Faced with a state-mandated deadline ordering communities to produce less garbage, officials of South County cities are scrambling to put together a recycling program that will cross city lines.

Plans discussed so far include establishing a regional curbside recycling program and creating a local processing center to collect the tons of garbage that could be diverted from landfills. But meeting those goals depends largely on the garbage-hauling industry, said Jan Goss, who oversees recycling under the county’s newly created Integrated Waste Management Department.

“The mandates are to the local governments,” Goss said. “But to fulfill them, government has to look to the private sector.”

In such an arrangement, San Juan Capistrano, Dana Point, San Clemente and county officials are working with their trash hauler, Solag Disposal Co., to launch a four-community, curbside recycling pilot plan expected to be in place this summer, officials said.

And discussion is under way to find a site for a private facility that would process the tons of recyclables expected to be collected from these ambitious programs, said government and private industry representatives.

“We have a real need to develop a recycling facility in this area,” said Mission Viejo City Manager Fred Sorsabal, who is preparing a report for an upcoming council vote on curbside recycling options.

A local center where trash trucks can drop off recyclables, which are then separated and transferred to the resale market, means that residents do not pay the bill for transporting them to such facilities in the North County and beyond, Sorsabal said.

At least one firm, Waste Management of North America Inc., is planning to build such a center, called a “materials recovery facility,” for the South County recycling market, said Hal Cahill, director of technical services for the firm’s Irvine-based Western region. The firm operates trash trucks under Dewey’s Rubbish Service, which covers El Toro, Lake Forest and Mission Viejo.

“We’re looking at a regional solution for the several communities in South Orange County,” Cahill said. “To make it work economically, we have to cross city lines and get into an areawide sector. And we’ve mounted a major effort to inform the cities.”

Because South County cities are too small to carry out a recycling program from start to finish, Cahill said, local officials are relying on private industry to carry out the demanding requirements of Assembly Bill 939, written by Assemblyman Byron Sher (D-Palo Alto).

Signed into law last September, the bill has been touted as a method to cut back on nearly 40 million tons of trash generated annually statewide, 90% of which goes into landfills.

It requires California cities and counties to show a 25% reduction in landfill garbage by 1995, and a 50% reduction by the year 2000. Reduction programs, largely achieved through recycling, must be operating by July, 1991.

South County officials are also under pressure from their constituents to begin curbside recycling programs, said Mike Sorg, public services director for San Clemente.

The voluntary pilot program being planned for San Juan Capistrano, San Clemente, Dana Point and the unincorporated community of Laguna Hills would start with 1,000 single-family homes in each area.

Residents would be provided with three bins to separate recyclable glass, aluminum and newspaper, similar to a process recently begun by Dewey’s Rubbish Service in Irvine and Laguna Beach, which have had extremely high participation rates, officials said.

Successive phases of the program, which would ultimately reach 15,000 homes in San Clemente, 6,500 homes in San Juan Capistrano and 5,400 homes in Dana Point, would not begin until a trash study mandated by the bill is complete for each city, Sorg said.

“We’re trying to both hurry and take our time in struggling with a very complex issue,” Sorg said. “Our (city) councils are under a lot of pressure because people want recycling so badly. But we’re saying we can’t go that fast because we have to make sure we’re keeping costs down, and that depends on the study and the decisions we make with the trash haulers.”

Under the state law, cities are required to complete a “waste characterization study,” showing, in essence, the demographics of trash. The study would outline how much recyclable refuse gets thrown out, and what types and amounts of recyclable materials make up each city’s garbage.

With the 1991 deadline approaching and the estimated cost of a trash study starting at $20,000 per city, South County officials are in another quandary. They must depend on a countywide study that would address each of its 29 municipalities, said Cynthia Ferguson, senior management assistant in the San Juan Capistrano public works department.

“The Southern Orange County cities are under a crunch,” Ferguson said. “We don’t have the money to do our own studies, but once we see the (study) results, we’ll know better how to divert 25% of this stuff from the landfills.”