Port Hueneme Refuses to Establish Curbside Recycling Program : Environment: City officials say there is not enough market for used material and such a plan would not be cost-effective. Critics wonder if local leaders are just resisting change.

Bucking a trend embraced by all other cities in Ventura County, Port Hueneme officials have refused to adopt a curbside pickup program that would make it easier for residents to recycle their garbage.

“The general public has had this stuff going through their ears about how wonderful it is, save the environment through recycling,” City Manager Richard Velthoen said. “But there’s a growing, valid concern about the cost-effectiveness and the real need for recycling.”

Sanitation officials acknowledge that recycling programs can be costly. But some residents and officials in other cities question whether Port Hueneme’s leaders are simply unwilling to change old habits.

Since 1990, when the Legislature ordered local governments to reduce landfill-bound waste, Ventura County’s other nine cities all have adopted curbside recycling programs.

Port Hueneme, however, has done little more than collect old telephone books and Christmas trees. Residents who wanted to recycle their trash had to haul it themselves to buy-back centers and vending-machine crushers.

In February, in a concession to the state’s mandates, the city put out neighborhood drop-off bins for newspaper collection at seven sites, and it plans to add bins for glass, bottles and plastics.

But the City Council has steadfastly refused to tack a $2 monthly surcharge on its residents’ trash bills to underwrite the cost of curbside collection. At $12.75 per month, the city already has the lowest trash collection fee in the county.

“We have a large retirement community and a lot of people who really work for a living and every dollar counts,” Velthoen said. “To charge clients more for a service that may not be cost-effective . . . the council chose not to do it.”

Resident Sheila Merlino castigated the council for living “in the Dark Ages” when it decided last month to spend $16,000 for the drop-off program rather than raise trash bills to pay the estimated $96,000 annual cost of curbside pickup. She accused the council of doing as little as possible to meet state waste-reduction requirements.

But city officials cite the growing pains of the recycling industry, and disputes over the direction government should take to usher it along. Markets remain weak for many recyclable items, particularly non-redeemable glass, largely because of limited use.

“There is no market for a lot of this stuff,” said Port Hueneme Mayor Orvene Carpenter, who sits on the board of the Ventura Regional Sanitation District. “It’s not recycled until it’s sold and reused; otherwise it’s just collected.”

William S. Chiat, the district’s director of planning and development, acknowledged that “there is a lot of controversy over what the future of recycling will be.

“Recycling is important since it instills personal responsibility in all of us to think about what we buy and what we throw away,” Chiat said. “But on the other hand, it’s end-of-the-tailpipe management of our waste system.”

Sanitation officials elsewhere in the county acknowledged that without trash-bill surcharges, few curbside programs make money or break even. But they said there are costs of not recycling that Port Hueneme officials seem inclined to ignore.

“When they talk about cost-effectiveness, are they taking into account the environmental cost of extraction and depletion of natural resources, and the pollution from refining those raw materials?” said Ventura recycling coordinator Eric Werbalowsky. “There are respiratory illnesses and lost workdays that pollution causes. Then there’s also the jobs created by the recycling industry, in hauling, processing and remanufacturing.”

Though some sanitation officials questioned Port Hueneme’s laissez-faire approach to recycling, they concede that it is the city’s prerogative to pursue its own course, as long as it meets state mandates.

“Port Hueneme is obviously trying to come up with a system to reach their target and they’re entitled to do that,” said Victoria Hand, county recycling manager. “Whether they use curbside or drop-off, the point is they have to reach their required diversion.”

Under the 1990 legislation, cities must reduce their landfill-bound wastes 25% by 1995 and 50% by the year 2000. Cities failing to meet those targets face fines of up to $10,000 a day.

Port Hueneme officials contend that they can meet the 1995 goal with the drop-off program, although it is projected to divert only about 3% of the city’s waste, compared with up to 12% for curbside programs.

The California Integrated Waste Management Board recently approved Port Hueneme’s waste-reduction plan, which said the city diverted more than 20% of its waste last year without any recycling program in place.

Recycling experts were skeptical about that contention but said there is no way to refute it.

“It’s questionable how truly accurate the numbers are” on any of the plans submitted to the state, said Christy Madden, planning section manager for the county solid waste department. “There is no mechanism to get at actual recycling rates.”

To meet its projections, Port Hueneme took far more credit than most other cities for diverting building and road construction debris that often would not end up in landfills anyway, county officials said. Pending legislation may reduce the credit that may be taken for such inert material, they said.

Velthoen said adjustments will be made if the targets cannot be met.

“If it becomes apparent that we can’t make the 25% and we need to do curbside, that’s what we’ll do, if there is no other solution,” Velthoen said. “But there’s no reason to jump into it right away.”

Velthoen said he believes that the county’s other cities pursued curbside recycling in part because “it was ‘politically correct.’ I’m not sure if there were opportunities for people to say if they wanted to pay for it.”

City officials elsewhere disagreed, saying their city councils acted in the belief that residents support the environment and are willing to pay a nominal charge to divert reusable trash from landfills.

About 250 cities statewide, mainly in urban areas, have introduced curbside pickup.

Oxnard was the last city to join the fold in Ventura County. Curbside containers have been distributed to about 40% of the city’s 25,000 single-family houses, with the remainder expected to get them by July.

The Channel Islands Beach Community Service District began providing curbside pickup to 1,800 homes in Silver Strand, Hollywood Beach and Hollywood-By-The-Sea in November, 1989. It was the first local government agency in Ventura County to offer curbside collection, followed shortly thereafter by Simi Valley and Fillmore.

Gerard Kapuscik, district general manager, said the program turned a $12,500 profit last year and diverted more than 10% of the community’s waste from Bailard Landfill.

“It’s clear to me that curbside recycling has to play an important part in the mix of strategies to reach the reduction targets,” Kapuscik said.