Price Tag on Landfill Jumps to $6.8 Million

At first the job seemed easy. Excavate and move dirt to build a giant hole and increase capacity at the county’s Olinda Alpha landfill near Brea.

But when contractors snagged the first boulder weighing 50 to 60 tons, they knew there might be trouble. It took special equipment and time--two things that can quickly run up construction costs--to deal with the problems.

Then they hit sandstone as hard as bedrock. Again the call was for special equipment, this time for a 10,000-pound rock hammer as a crusher.

On Tuesday, county supervisors approved a change order from the original $270,000 estimate to $6.8 million, one of the largest county overruns in years. But that isn’t all. A second contract involving the same project was increased from $102,000 to $617,000 after a landslide collapsed hundreds of tons of earth.

In the long run, the added capacity will allow the Olinda landfill to continue operating until 2013 and bring in millions of dollars in revenue, said county officials who defended the overrun.

“This is a significant cost in terms of a total for a change order,” said John Sibley, director of the county’s Integrated Waste Management Department. “But when this project is done, the major capital improvements for Olinda will be completed and we’ll be able to generate revenue of about $40 million for the next 13 years, handling the waste stream of the county’s northern cities.”

Opened in 1960, the landfill receives about 7,000 tons of waste per day.

Supervisor Todd Spitzer, whose district includes Olinda landfill, said added funds were difficult to accept but that the work is in the taxpayers’ best interests.

“Does anybody like to see a $6.8 million change order? No, but on construction projects, especially big ones, there are unforeseen things that cause higher expenses,” Spitzer said.

One of the reasons to increase Olinda’s capacity, Spitzer said, is to continue to have space at county-owned landfills so trash fees could be relatively low.

The alternative is to have landfills such as Olinda, one of three in the county, fill earlier than planned and force trash haulers to travel out of the county and consequently pay higher fees, he said.

A noble idea, said Bruce Whitaker, a member of the Committees of Correspondence, which began monitoring Orange County government after the 1994 bankruptcy. But the cost figures made Whitaker cringe and remark it sounded like the same “unanticipated costs” excuse taken out of the “same play book” as the Transportation Corridor Agencies, which recently increased toll fees because it hadn’t expected ridership on the San Joaquin Hills toll road to fall below projections.

Those in the construction industry maintain that unforeseen costs are understandable and common.

“Any time you get a large construction project, especially in zones of geological fault, you got trouble,” said Dave Lowry, the site manager for the county. “Since 1980, the landfill area has experienced nine landslides.”

Lowry said the county conducted soil tests by boring samples every 150 to 200 feet. The bedrock was found between 75 and 150 feet deep and the boulders were at 25 to 40 feet, he said.

At the site, the county had anticipated 10% of costs associated with rock removal. The county had anticipated about 40,000 cubic yards of rock but after discovery of the slabs and rock, the figure nearly doubled.

Dynamiting the bedrock was considered but the site was within 75 feet of a main access road, which contractors did not want to destroy.

The contractor--Edge Environmental Inc. and R.E. Monks, a joint venture based in Arizona-- did not return telephone calls.