Using Landfills to Help Everyone

The Orange County Board of Supervisors is on the right track in giving cities a chance to negotiate long-term fees to dump garbage at the county-owned landfills.

Last year, in an attempt to raise badly needed cash in the wake of the county’s bankruptcy, the Integrated Waste Management Department increased the fees from $22.75 per ton to $35.

The increase led cities to shop around, with several taking advantage of the lower rates offered by Los Angeles County. The loss of business forced the Board of Supervisors to cut the dumping fee to $27. Now it might decrease more, perhaps back to the rates before the bankruptcy.

The county’s system of three operating garbage dumps in Irvine, San Juan Capistrano and Brea, plus more than 20 closed landfills, has been viewed as a cash cow since the county filed for bankruptcy nearly two years ago.

There were numerous proponents for auctioning off the system. Estimates of a likely price were in the hundreds of millions of dollars. A bid from the Sanitation Districts of Orange County to buy the entire landfill system for $300 million, paid over 20 years, was rejected, with supervisors hoping for more.

Unfortunately for the county budget, the hopes for a higher price withered on the vine.

The scrutiny of the landfills and other property owned by the county with an eye to a possible sale was right. There long had been rhetoric about running a “lean” operation, but even in years when recession caused tax revenue to decline, there was not much sense of urgency in cutting spending and increasing income.

That changed with the bankruptcy.

Some county properties were sold, though not as many as supporters of privatization had hoped. County officials have also pledged to save money through the elimination of two departments.

If the Integrated Waste Management Department does retain the landfills, they can be used to generate a steady stream of income for the county. That is valuable because it gives planners a known quantity to consider when drawing up budgets.

Long-term contracts with cities could help, too. Each side would know costs and revenue, rather than facing severe fluctuations from year to year that make budgets appear to be written in vanishing ink.

The county has been unsuccessful in the past in negotiating long-term contracts with the cities. But it could be easier this time because of the still pressing need for a constant revenue stream to recover from the bankruptcy and because of the lessons of supply and demand: Raise the costs too much and cities that can go elsewhere will do so.