On paper, the idea makes sense--more to the point, it is law in the state of California: the amount of garbage going into local landfills must be reduced 50 percent by the year 2005, or face fines and penalties.

To achieve that goal, consumers have been admonished to sort out and recycle items like newspaper, bottles, glass and aluminum. But in a bizarre twist of logic, even as consumers reduce what''s going to the landfill, the Salinas Valley Solid Waste Authority board is accepting trash from Santa Clara County into an Authority-owned landfill on Lewis Road near Prunedale.

This week, the Authority even asked the Association of Monterey Bay Governments (AMBAG) to sign off on a negative declaration that would allow for even more daily tonnage at the landfill--tonnage coming "from the north" on trucks operated by the same garbage giant--USA Waste Services--that owns Salinas Disposal Service, which operates the Lewis Road landfill.

While this may all sound very mystifying to lay customers dutifully withholding glass, bottle, cans and newspapers from the waste stream, local garbage officials contend that it is all quite logical--and financially necessary.

Lewis Road "is not naturally attracting enough tonnage to keep the landfill operating," explains Dennis Gehrt, a consultant to the waste authority, which formed last year after Monterey County decided to get out of the waste management business. "Your options at that point are to run it at a loss, subsidize it from the operation of other landfills--or close it."

The 140-acre Lewis Road facility--of which 18 acres are actual landfill--was first purchased by Monterey County in 1950 and then transferred to the new authority in 1997 along with the county''s other landfill operations. But Gehrt and Salinas Public Works Director John Fair maintain that Lewis Road''s design and location have conspired to make it inefficient.

Gehrt argues that the Authority in general has too many inadequate landfills--Crazy Horse Canyon in Salinas, Lewis Road in North County, Johnson Road in Gonzales and a transfer station at Jolon. What the authority needs is a large landfill--large enough to handle 20,000 tons a month, the amount Gehrt estimates is generated in the county. But Lewis Road also has site-specific problems that make it a poor candidate for expansion: It butts up against residential property, and it has a problem with methane gas seepage that the county has handled using a well to emit the gas and flare to burn it off.

Nevertheless, according to Gehrt only about a fourth of the 3,400 tons of garbage coming in monthly to Lewis Road is arriving from Monterey County destinations. And the rest? Gehrt says that garbage is coming in from San Jose. And who''s the garbage collector there? A company owned by USA Waste, the corporate garbage giant that recently purchased Salinas Disposal Service. And, under a plan to expand capacity at the landfill a mile west of San Miguel Canyon Road, Lewis Road would end up virtually doubling its monthly intake of garbage-a plan that garbage officials say would allow for an increase in revenues and an accelerated closure date for the dump.

"The operation at Lewis when the Salinas Valley Solid Waste Authority took over was very inefficient, based on daily tonnage," explains Fair. "It didn''t pay for itself--we would have been losing money the way we were."

What does goes into the cost of operating a landfill? Gehrt estimates that it takes a minimum of two to three people and three pieces of heavy equipment to process 650-700 tons of garbage a month; an additional person and the same equipment can handle double that amount, he says.

Then there are the so-called "closure" costs: money that is now legislatively required to properly cap, seal and monitor landfills--monitoring that must go on for 30 years after the landfill closes. Currently, Lewis Road has about $600,000 in its closure fund. It will need about $1.6 million in closure costs by its scheduled closure date of the fourth-quarter in the year 2000. And, says Gehrt, that doesn''t even include "regulatory costs" of around $200,000 a year to meet requirements set forth by the Monterey Bay Unified Air Pollution Control Board, the Regional Water Quality Control District and the Integrated Waste Management Board.

"You could either pay closure costs or pay ongoing regulatory costs, but [without outside garbage] there is not enough revenue to pay for both," says Gehrt.

Gehrt and Fair both say the Authority is generating some of Lewis Road''s closing costs from a portion of the fees charged for dumping waste at the landfill.

"That funding stream will be used to pay for the closure costs," said Fair.

Tipping fees--the per-ton cost of dumping--run $39 at Lewis and Fair contends those fees would be a lot higher--$50/ton--if Lewis was forced to subsist on in-county garbage alone.

But that $39 fee is what''s charged to individuals at the gate of the landfill. Garbage trucks bringing waste may pay less, "a range from $9 all the way to $39 a ton," says Richard Leggett, a spokesperson for USA Waste in Salinas. Leggett explains that of the fees collected, a portion goes to the Authority, and a portion goes to USA Waste--which collects money as the operator of the landfill for the Authority, and pays a fee, as owners of the garbage companies bringing the out-of-county trash in to the landfill.

"It''s a normal position that all the landfills are in, actually," says Leggett, who declined to give precise figures for the price USA Waste charges for dumping out-of-county waste at Lewis.

Despite the sale on space at Lewis, garbage officials--including Supervisor Tom Perkins, who sits on the Authority''s board--acknowledge that the Authority is still in the market for landfill space.

"If the dump is good enough to bring waste in from out of the county why isn''t it good enough for us to save for ourselves?" asks Warren Church a former Monterey County Supervisor who was in office at the time the county acquired Lewis Road.

According to Perkins, the Crazy Horse landfill on Crazy Horse Canyon Road has just about 10 years of capacity left, meaning the search is currently on for a place to put more garbage. "We''re trying to find which site in the county is most economical," says Perkins. "As of this point, the [Authority] board is looking at Johnson Road."

"It''s in an area where there is lot more open space around it for expansion," says Gehrt. "It''s the best location for the trash--it''s about as centrally located as we can get."

Expanding Johnson Road would require a full environmental review--at a cost of at least $100,000, in addition to regular operating costs. But according to trash administration Alice-In-Wonderland logic, it somehow makes sense to acquire more landfill space--even when the county already has landfill space, and residents are doing their best to save landfill space.

"We need to stop putting waste in the landfill," says Gehrt, "but that means there are probably too many small landfills--so you have to transition to fewer, more efficient landfills."