Trash Agency to Be Billed for Extra Traffic

The City Council this week agreed to impose a $57,000 annual user fee on the directors of the Calabasas Landfill to pay for maintenance of several city roads well traveled by trucks going to the dump.

Calabasas officials said the city has spent a large amount of its resources to maintain the affected roads, repairing damage caused for the most part by trucks from sanitation districts outside city limits.

A truck traffic mitigation fee charged to directors of the Los Angeles County Sanitation Districts, which oversees the landfill, would offset those costs, they said. “Road maintenance, which is bloody expensive, should be shared by the user,” Councilwoman Lesley Devine said Friday.

The resolution, passed unanimously by the council Wednesday night, would allow staff to charge the districts $57,000 annually--the amount the city estimates is added to maintenance costs by county trucks.

But the city retains responsibility for an additional $57,000 in maintenance of the streets, primarily Las Virgenes, Lost Hills and Agoura roads.

Steve Macguine, solid waste manager for the sanitation districts, said that although the agency had been discussing the issue with Calabasas officials, he was not aware the city had taken any action.

But there is precedent for the Calabasas decision, Macguine said, noting that the agency pays fees in other jurisdictions where it has facilities.

“Some small cities neighboring our facilities feel that they are enduring an undue burden because of them,” Macguine said. “We don’t want them to feel that way. We don’t want our facilities to impact them any more than they have to.”

In a report to the Calabasas council, Traffic/Transportation Manager Robert B. Yalda said an average of 580 truckloads traveled daily to the landfill in 1995, and a total of 177,502 for the year had net weights from 1.5 to 40 tons.

And of the 15,195 truckloads delivered to the landfill in August 1995, the peak month, only 2,112 originated in Calabasas.