No Time to Waste as Trash-Law Paperwork Piles Up

The race to recycle is on in San Fernando City Hall, and City Engineer Jerry Wedding loves the pressure.

Wedding is accustomed to the endless telephone calls and reams of paperwork that are part of the daily grind in a municipal bureaucracy. And these days, much of his time is consumed by a year-old state law requiring cities and counties to plan drastic reductions in the amount of waste they send to landfills.

“It’s going to take an awful lot of staff time on the part of cities just to get these programs in place,” Wedding said of the provisions of the statute, which are so extensive that many local governments have hired full-time employees to deal with them. “It’s a race to meet deadlines. It’s fun.”

Not every city official in the area shares Wedding’s enthusiasm. Indeed, municipal bureaucrats throughout the San Fernando, Santa Clarita and Antelope valleys are sweating as they scramble to devise waste reduction programs by July 1, 1991. Those plans must disclose how much garbage is being sent to landfills and propose ways to achieve reductions over the next decade. Missing that deadline carries a $10,000 daily fine.

The bill, authored by Assemblyman Byron Sher (D-Palo Alto) and signed by Gov. George Deukmejian Sept. 29, 1989, requires 25% reductions in dumped solid waste by 1995 and 50% reductions by 2000.

Questions about the law abound. A major source of confusion is whether cities that in the past have adopted trash reduction or recycling programs will be credited under the new law for their efforts. The statute imposes the same reduction goals on all cities.

The California Integrated Waste Management Board, a state agency created by the new law to overse its implementation, has not decided whether cities will be credited for past environmental efforts, spokeswoman Julia Leader said.

In an effort to answer questions about the new law, waste management consultant Eugene Tseng in June invited municipal officials to meet with experts in a round-table discussion at UCLA. “It’s really scary” for officials of small cities unaccustomed to coping with waste management issues, Tseng said of the new law.

Uncertainties have led to grumbling among municipal officials. One objection is that July, 1991, is too soon to require cities to submit a description of their trash and a plan for reducing the amount dumped in landfills. A related complaint is that the deadline adds to the cost of drafting such a program, city officials said.

“Figuring out what our garbage looks like and how much is being recycled is going to be a nightmare,” said Joan Edwards, who is directing the city of Los Angeles’ effort to comply with the law.

Los Angeles plans to hire two large consulting firms and several smaller ones to develop its waste reduction plan, and also is devoting significant staff time to the issue, Edwards said.

The city of Los Angeles dumps 18,000 tons of trash daily, 40% of the total countywide volume of 45,000 tons.

“It strikes me as being a tremendous workload in a short period of time,” said Wedding, who noted that San Fernando has allocated $112,000 to hire its own consultant as well as a full-time recycling coordinator.

Complaints by local officials about the deadline have not gone unheard in Sacramento. A cleanup amendment to the waste reduction bill, signed into law June 19, permits cities to draft their plans using information about trash from similar communities--rather than doing all of their own research.

But the recent amendment does not address another widespread complaint--that the reductions mandated by the original law are too severe.

Smaller cities speculate that they will be able to reach the 25% reduction largely by improving residential recycling programs--specifically by initiating programs to compost organic garbage, which accounts for one-third of all residential solid waste.

But recycling alone will not solve solid waste problems, officials said. New markets for the recycled materials must be developed. John Medina, director of public works for the city of Santa Clarita, said his city could compost in a month as much organic waste as it could use in a year.

Even if cities meet the 25% reduction goal, recycling alone will not achieve the 50% target for the year 2000, officials said. That will require persuading the public to change its habits--to use mugs instead of paper cups, for instance, or to photocopy on both sides of a page.

“My opinion is the 50% is going to be very difficult,” said Jeff Long, Lancaster’s director of public works. “And I think you have to go back to some basic sources of solid waste to fix the problem.”

For Los Angeles, even the 25% reduction will require a massive non-residential recycling effort, Edwards said. A city with such “a heterogeneous population and therefore a heterogeneous waste stream” will have to initiate sweeping commercial and industrial recycling programs, she said.

Several pilot curbside recycling programs are in place in residential areas of Los Angeles, said Lupe Vela, an aide to Edwards. Permanent citywide curbside programs will be phased in starting in September and continuing through April, 1993, Vela said.

Municipal officials also complain that even if cities reduce their dumped waste by the mandated percentages, they will have difficulty proving compliance.

“The problem is going to be keeping track of what’s recycled,” said Bill George, recycling coordinator for the Los Angeles County Sanitation Districts, the public entity that operates most area landfills.

A city gets credit under the law for all trash recycled by its residents, regardless of whether the trash is recycled within the city’s borders, George noted. “It’s going to take a lot of paperwork” for each city to follow its garbage, he said.

Efforts to comply with the state law are as varied as objections to it. Several municipal officials said they had heard reports of other cities hiring lawyers to challenge the statute in court, but none admitted to considering such action. Some cities have hired private consultants to draft customized programs--at a cost of up to $200,000 for most cities, and far more for Los Angeles.

San Fernando has budgeted $60,000 for its advisers, Wedding said. Lancaster plans to pay its consultants up to $75,000, Long said.

Palmdale is paying $174,000 for development of a 20-year waste reduction plan, and senior civil engineer Leon Swain said “we can save the city many, many times the amount of money we’re spending on this.”

Other cities, daunted by such costs, are considering hiring a single consultant. Officials of Westlake Village, Agoura Hills and Thousand Oaks are discussing such an agreement, said Mike Mathews, assistant to the city manager of Westlake Village.

Still other cities are contemplating joining consortia organized and subsidized by the county sanitation districts. Some Valley cities offered entrance into the group are reluctant to join, however.

Agoura Hills city planner Mike Kamino said his city is considering linking separately with Westlake Village and Thousand Oaks because the district group to which his city was assigned includes vastly different cities--such as Beverly Hills.

As some cities rush to comply with the new state law, others claim to be nearing completion.

Glendale hired a consultant to draft a waste reduction plan last year, months before the new statute went into effect. The city should receive a final draft of the proposal “within weeks,” said Lino Torres, the city’s sanitation and mechanical maintenance superintendent.

Burbank hired a consultant two months ago, and although the state law “is very confusing,” city recycling specialist Hope McAloon said, “we don’t foresee a problem.” Burbank, which has had a curbside recycling program since 1982, also has launched a public relations campaign to foster awareness of the waste problem, McAloon said.

Such information campaigns may be the ultimate key to compliance with the new state law, several city officials said. “Californians are going to have to change their entire mind-set about waste disposal,” said Kamino of Agoura Hills. “You can’t just put out your trash can each week and forget about it.”

* Recycling on Rise: Refunding hike pushes bottles, cans up 50%. A3

* Paper prices plunge: Recycled newspaper prices may drop further before rebounding.

* Listings: Valley-area recycling centers by ZIP code and community. B5

WASTE PLANS: Cities in the San Fernando, Santa Clarita and Antelope valleys are scrambling to devise massive waste reduction programs to satisfy a new state law by a July 1, 1991, deadline.