Supervisors Trim County’s Landfill Fees

Some residents and businesses can expect lower garbage bills after county supervisors on Tuesday approved contracts reducing landfill dumping fees.

Beginning July 1, cities and haulers who entered into the contracts will see their landfill fees drop from $27 per ton to $22, roughly the same rate the county charged before its December 1994 bankruptcy.

The county also has agreed to continue operating its three landfills for at least the next decade and shelve a controversial plan to possibly sell the system to a private firm.

“This is really a historic moment,” said Brea City Manager Frank Benest, who helped negotiate the pact. “The city and the county have an opportunity to preserve the landfills as a public system. . . . Everyone wins in this partnership.”

All but two Orange County cities have signed the contracts, and the holdouts--Dana Point and Laguna Hills--are scheduled to act on the proposal in the next month. In addition, seven independent trash haulers and most sanitation districts have agreed to similar arrangements.

The disposal contracts provide the cities with a fixed dumping price for 10 years. The county, in turn, gains a predictable flow of garbage into its landfills in San Juan Capistrano, Irvine and Brea.

The fee decrease comes two years after the Board of Supervisors hiked dumping rates more than 50% to an all-time high of $35 a ton.

The high fee prompted some cities to abandon the county’s landfills and take their trash to Los Angeles County dumps with lower rates. The exodus prompted the county to drop the fee to $27.

The new $22 rates will be subsidized in part by the importation of trash from outside the county. The importation is expected to bring in about $25 million a year; $15 million will be used for bankruptcy recovery efforts, and $10 million will support the lower rates for cities and help repay bankruptcy debts.

Each city will decide on its own how much to reduce consumer trash bills in response to the lower dumping fees.

“Every city has different costs and different arrangements,” said Sue Gordon, a spokeswoman for Integrated Waste Management. “There are many factors involved . . . in whether [the changes] are passed on.”

County supervisors hailed the agreement as both sound public policy and a sign that the relationship between cities and the county, strained by the bankruptcy, were gradually improving.

“This goes a long way in repairing that relationship,” Supervisor Todd Spitzer said.

Added Supervisor Thomas W. Wilson: “No question that this is the only answer from a public-policy perspective.”

In other action Tuesday, the board rejected a proposal by the Health Care Agency to use some of a $921,000 state grant to hire four temporary drug and alcohol program workers.

Hiring the four workers would cost about $183,000. But Supervisor Jim Silva and Spitzer objected to adding four new positions when the county already has 1,000 vacant positions.

Silva urged the agency to fill the four posts from existing positions. But health-care officials said his request would be difficult to carry out because the vacant posts were in different sections of the agency.

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Less to Dump

The Board of Supervisors on Tuesday voted to reduce landfill dumping rates to $22 per ton for cities and haulers that sign long-term contracts with the county. The recent history of landfill dumping rates:

1994: $22.75

1995: $35.00

1996: $27.00

1997: $22.00*

* Cities, haulers with long-term disposal agreements

Source: Integrated Waste Management Department