It’s not easy finding a place for the garbage produced by a quarter-million people.

<></>Steve Johnson knows a few universal truths about trash. “Everybody wants to get rid of the trash, but they don’t want it near them,” he says. “They don’t want to pay too much and they want someone else to deal with it.”

Around these parts, that someone else is often Johnson, general manager of the Salinas Valley Solid Waste Authority (SVSWA), a man with “Recycle” posters on his office walls and a “No Dumping” sign on his desk. As head of the waste agency, Johnson is ultimately responsible for the 900 tons of garbage produced by the 250,000 residents of the Salinas Valley every day.

While he can talk at length about the latest technologies in trash disposal, the day-to-day reality is that most of that garbage ends up in a landfill—still the cheapest disposal system.

The agency manages three landfills, all of which are filling up. Seven years ago, the SVSWA started looking for new landfill sites, and in November 2003, a task force identified a handful of canyons in Long Valley, near San Lucas, along the Highway 198 corridor.

Johnson quickly became the least popular kid on the block.

“Every time we’ve gone and looked at a potential site,” Johnson says, “the closest neighbors immediately say, ‘You shouldn’t place it here, you should place it over there.’

“When you’re talking about someone’s ranch—land that has been in the family for three or four generations—it’s not a business deal. It’s emotional.”

On Jan. 19, the SVSWA’s Board of Directors will move a step closer toward selecting a new landfill site. Several Salinas Valley property owners will be at the meeting, lobbying the board to remove their ranches from the short list.

Tim Hearne, a Long Valley rancher, says he wants the board to look at other options.

“We really don’t feel that there’s a need for a new landfill anywhere in Monterey County,” he says. “It’s not just not in our backyard, it’s anywhere in the county.”

---

In 35 years, the SVSWA’s three landfills will run out of room. It’s still a ways down the road, but, Johnson says, there’s a lot of bureaucratic red tape that goes into creating a garbage dump. The SVSWA Board adopted a long-term waste management plan in 1999, which, among other things, would find a new landfill site in the Salinas Valley to secure 70 years of capacity.

After looking at 61 potential locations, the board approved nine alternatives to be analyzed as part of the long-term plan.

These nine options include using other landfills—from Marina to Nevada—or building a facility to burn the solid waste garbage to produce energy. But the alternative that has received the most attention from opponents is number nine: develop a new landfill in a selected canyon along Highway 198.

Hearne’s ranch sits on 1,640 acres. He raises cattle and grows grain.

“It’s beautiful country,” he says, “green, and in the summer it turns golden brown. It’s nice and peaceful out there, and fairly quiet most of the year. Highway 198 runs through the middle of it, and it does get busy at times when the produce is running.”

He doesn’t want to imagine the rolling hills razed and turned into a landfill.

About two years ago, Hearne says he heard that the waste authority was considering building a new landfill in Long Valley. “We’ve been involved ever since,” he says.

Hearne and other property owners formed the Committee to Save Long Valley, hired Armanasco Public Relations and an attorney from Lombardo & Gilles, and began campaigning against a new landfill in South County.

By 2005, they had collected a formidable army of supporters. The list includes the Monterey County Cattlemen’s Association, the Farm Bureau, the Salinas Valley Chamber of Commerce, the Nature Conservancy, and Rep. Sam Farr.

“My sympathies are with the landowners,” said Farr in a radio interview last year. “I just don’t think we need to be desecrating our beautiful canyons as big, new garbage dumps.”

---

The committee’s members want to see the waste authority pursue other options—such as additional recycling, waste conversion technologies, and a long-term contract to take trash to the Marina landfill, which has about 105 years of remaining capacity. They worry that a Long Valley location will create air pollution and traffic congestion, and eat up productive grazing land and open space.

Johnson says the committee members are getting ahead of themselves. Specific questions won’t be addressed until after the SVSWA Board decides to proceed with an Environmental Impact Review on one or more specific sites, or until the board decides to develop a cost analysis on each of the nine alternatives.

While the Marina landfill does have the capacity to take the Salinas Valley’s waste, Johnson says this option would be a very expensive one for ratepayers.

“Instead of $18 a ton, it would cost $35 a ton, so we would have to raise rates by 30 percent,” he says. “There’s a pretty good economic reason for not using Marina.”

But, he adds, no decision has been made to build a new landfill.

“Our board is very conscientiously looking at all nine alternatives,” Johnson says. “We’re not in a hurry—although the board has received a lot of pressure from Gilles [attorneys] and Armanasco [public relations] to exclude the Long Valley alternative.”

At the December 2005 meeting, the SVSWA Board, which is made up of city councilmembers from the five Salinas Valley cities, plus County Supervisors Fernando Armenta and Lou Calcagno, was slated to prioritize the nine options, and to adopt a “constraints analysis” (a preliminary, pre-EIR study) on the five canyons along Highway 198. The board voted to continue the discussion to this month’s meeting, Jan. 19. The meeting is open to the public.

THE SVSWA BOARD MEETS AT 6PM THURSDAY, JAN. 19, IN THE GONZALES COUNCIL CHAMBERS, 117 4TH ST., GONZALES. TO DOWNLOAD AN AGENDA, VISIT WWW.SVSWA.ORG.