It’s L.A. County’s Trash but High Desert’s Vote

A pair of ballot measures to be decided by voters in San Bernardino County next week will also affect Los Angeles County residents for decades to come, although they have no say in the matter.

The outcome might resolve where Los Angeles County--and the rest of Southern California--will dump much of its trash when it runs out of space at its own landfills.

San Bernardino County voters will decide March 26 whether to approve construction of a massive garbage dump at Amboy, a High Desert hamlet between Barstow and Needles along historic U.S. 66.

By a 3-2 margin, the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors has already blessed the project, called Rail-Cycle. It is a joint effort by Waste Management Inc.--the nation’s largest trash disposal and recycling company--and the Santa Fe railroad.

Their plan is to haul garbage from Southern California’s urban areas to Amboy in railroad cars, then dump it on the desert floor. Over its projected 100-year life span, the dump will grow to 400 feet high, its base measuring three miles by one mile.

The idea might sound like a panacea for Los Angeles County’s inevitable trash disposal crisis: Send the garbage out of town. Already, some of Los Angeles County’s trash is going to Orange County.

San Bernardino County could make $24 million or more a year in revenue through fees assessed on the dump--costs that ultimately would be passed on to the residential and business customers whose trash is sent to the desert.

But voter approval is needed on two competing ballot measures this month before the project can seek other state and federal approvals.

Measure M would allow the county to collect income from the project. There is some debate over whether the project could still move forward even if Measure M is not approved and the county simply did not directly profit from the landfill.

The clearer issue is Measure L, an initiative prompted by an agribusiness company that owns farmland next to the proposed dump. That measure would prohibit landfills within 10 miles of significant groundwater basins within unincorporated areas of the county. Passage of Measure L would effectively kill the dump, and other future dumps outside of city limits that are within 10 miles of aquifers.

Opponents of the dump, called the Clean Desert Water Coalition, include various environmental groups and the Sierra Club. The coalition is unabashedly backed by the Cadiz Land Co., whose farmlands are next to the dump site.

Cadiz has planted about 2,000 acres in table grapes, citrus and various row crops--but owns 51,000 acres there so it can tap the 4 million acre-foot aquifer beneath its property.

Coalition Chairman Paul Woodruff, a former state assemblyman for the region, said the dump will jeopardize the aquifer not only for Cadiz but for as many as 100,000 High Desert residents who may someday need to rely on it for water if it is sold to local water utilities.

Woodruff and other critics say there is no proven liner to protect against toxic materials in the garbage, over decades, leaching into an underground water supply. “The area’s precious and limited water supply would be jeopardized just for a place to pile garbage,” he said. “There are better alternatives, better sites.”

He characterizes the profit for the county as minuscule and a poor trade-off for the environmental problems created by the dump--not the least of which would be 14 railroad trains running daily between the City of Industry and Amboy.

Waste Management, meanwhile, has organized its own campaign, under the banner of the Coalition for Clean Drinking Water.

Stu Clark, Rail-Cycle’s project director, said passage of Measure L would force the costly development of landfills even closer to urban areas in San Bernardino County and jeopardize their water supplies.

He said that the landfill plan has been subjected to unprecedented environmental review and that the liner that would separate the garbage from the aquifer is “1,000 times more effective” than what is required by state and federal laws.

If ultimately approved, the dump could handle up to 21,000 tons of garbage a day from around Southern California.

Los Angeles County officials look to such mega-dumps as Rail-Cycle as the solution to their trash disposal problems. Los Angeles County produces about 40,000 tons of garbage every day--about half of all of Southern California’s trash.

“We have reason to believe that ultimately we will be dependent on desert sites for at least some of our trash,” said Joe Howard, spokesman for the Los Angeles County Sanitation Districts.

The county has braced for a landfill crisis for years. But because of effective recycling programs and a downturn in the economy--which has meant less construction waste--the county has continued to eke out more landfill life.

However, several county landfills are scheduled to close in the near future. Officials have been hard pressed to find new sites in the county and face local opposition to enlarging the capacity of existing landfills.

“These outlying [desert] sites will definitely become more important to us 20 years from now,” Howard said.

The state’s Integrated Waste Management Board estimates that Los Angeles County has 13 to 17 years of landfill capacity remaining, based on operations currently permitted.

The Rail-Cycle project is one of several proposed for California’s deserts. Another mega-dump, called Eagle Mountain, is proposed near Desert Center, east of Palm Springs, but has been thwarted by lawsuits and environmental review problems.