Trash Hauler Will Return to Orange County Landfill

Under intense pressure from Orange County officials, a local trash hauler reversed direction Thursday and agreed to bring its business back to a county landfill by Sept. 1.

The hauler, Anaheim Disposal, had surprised county officials last week by pulling out of the Olinda landfill near Brea and shipping most of its 2,500 tons of garbage each day to a private West Covina dump.

That move, county officials said, would have cost Orange County about $12 million a year in lost gate fees at the Olinda landfill, a shortfall so serious that officials were considering asking Los Angeles County haulers to bring their garbage here. They say such a move will no longer be necessary.

“We have made a corporate decision to reutilize the Orange County landfills beginning Sept. 1,” Vincent Taormina, chief executive officer of Anaheim Disposal, said in a prepared statement. “We feel this decision, over the short and long term, will be in the best interest of the customers we serve as well as Orange County as a whole.”

The agreement was completed between Taormina and Orange County Integrated Waste Management Director Frank R. Bowerman over lunch Thursday, hours after news of the proposal to solicit Los Angeles garbage became public.

Bowerman credited Board of Supervisors Chairman Gaddi H. Vasquez with persuading Taormina to bring his company’s business back to Orange County. Vasquez said he met with Taormina and urged him to reconsider.

“By doing what he has done, or at least what he’s thinking of doing, he jeopardized the whole system of waste management in Orange County,” Vasquez said. “When imbalances occur in the system, it affects everybody.”