More Than Clouds of Gulls Flock to the County’s High-Tech Landfill

Orange County’s state-of-the-art landfill in the oak-covered backcountry of Bee Canyon opened its gates to the first trash truck a year ago.

Six days a week, hundreds of trucks make the climb to the remote facility 4 miles northeast of El Toro Marine Corps Air Station to dump their 3,800 tons of rubbish daily.

Once dumped, the stacks of trash are spread around by bulldozers and covered over with a layer of earth. In 20 to 30 years, the trucks will have brought enough debris to fill the 725-acre canyon. Then, the landfill will be sealed and turned into either a regional park or a public golf course.

Because of its technology, engineers and sanitation officials from as far away as the Soviet Union have come to see the landfill.

The constant stream of visitors prompted Board of Supervisors Chairman Gaddi H. Vasquez to note that the landfill was becoming a tourist attraction in Orange County.

“The new landfill has worked just as it was planned,” said Frank Bowerman, director of the county’s Integrated Waste Management Department. “It was so well planned that it does not surprise me that everything worked so well.”

Along with the curious, the landfill has attracted thousands of gulls that fly over the area to land and feed on the garbage. Periodically, charges are set off to scare the birds away, but it is not long before the flocks return. Each afternoon the birds leave when the day’s trash is covered over with dirt.

Planning for the high-technology landfill--lined with several layers of clay, plastic and a synthetic filter fabric to prevent pollutants from seeping into the ground--was not easy. It took county officials 10 years and $50 million to take the landfill from the drawing boards to Bee Canyon and get the required permits from 17 different agencies.

Officials were faced with legal obstacles, too. The city of Irvine filed a lawsuit in 1983 to block the opening of the landfill. In the end, the city dropped its suit in exchange for the county’s restricting use of the landfill to commercial trash haulers. The city also won several environmental concessions, including an agreement by the county to replace each oak tree destroyed during construction with seven new trees.

Each year, the county discards about 4.4 million tons of trash--about 2.2 tons for every man, woman and child living in Orange County. It is the highest per capita ratio of any county in the nation.

The mammoth crater formed by Bee Canyon is designed to hold more than 110 million cubic yards of non-hazardous solid waste. The canyon is so large that it would take a giant earthmover nearly 100 years to fill the basin working eight hours a day, 365 days a year.

To protect the ground water beneath the canyon from pollution, the floor and the sides of the canyon are covered with 1 to 2 feet of firm, fine-grained clay. On top of the clay, engineers placed a thick polyethylene plastic liner, then 2 feet of sand, a layer of high-tech filter fabric, and finally by 2 feet of topsoil.

An extensive drainage system guides water and leached liquids into big sumps at the lowest part of the canyon. When collected, the most polluted liquids are tested and disposed of off the site. The county--facing a growing solid waste crisis--closed one of its five landfills last year in San Joaquin Hills and is nearing the deadline to seal up another site east of Orange.

Bowerman said the most surprising development since the Bee Canyon landfill opened on March 12, 1990, was the lower-than-expected amount of trash delivered to the site. Officials predicted that between 5,000 tons and 6,000 tons a day would arrive. Instead, the average has been about 3,800 tons daily.

Officials speculate that the slow, 3-mile drive up a hill to the landfill may be the reason for the lower-than-expected loads. Bowerman said trash companies may have opted to use closer, more convenient landfills. Ongoing construction on Interstate 5 around Sand Canyon Avenue may be another reason trash companies are sending their trucks to the Santiago Canyon landfill rather than face delays going to Bee Canyon.

“Time is money for trash trucks,” said Vicki L. Wilson, assistant director of the Integrated Waste Management Department.

The lower-than-expected loads, plus recycling, will extend the life of Bee Canyon by about a decade, Wilson said. Also, the life of Santiago Canyon landfill, which was scheduled to close this year, has been extended to 1995.

Dumping fees at Bee Canyon have brought in $17.4 million so far, officials said. The money goes into a special enterprise fund that is used to pay off the initial $50-million investment, plus operating costs, and for the future development of other landfills in the county.