The Martinelli family of Point Reyes Station, the County of Marin, Waste Management, Stinson Beach Water District, Bolinas Public Utility District, and the San Francisco Regional Water Quality Control Board have for three years gone round and round over who should pay how much of the cost to cap the Martinellis’ defunct West Marin Sanitary Landfill.

Some year, the issue will probably be settled in court. In the meantime, there is no place in West Marin for people to legally get rid of an old sofa or a pickup truckload of building-material remnants in a timely fashion.

So some scofflaws drop it off illegally. Almost every week, Sheriff’s Calls contains a report of trash being dumped along West Marin roads. Because the dumping is not the result of inattentive deputies (two officers at a time must cover about 200 square miles), Sheriff’s Calls usually reminds readers that stopping the problem is a matter for the Board of Supervisors.

Obviously, all that is needed is a ramp from which drivers could dump their trash into large bins. The bins would periodically be trucked to a landfill or recycling center.

Probably the best place for all this is somewhere on the 25-acre site of the old dump in Point Reyes Station. (The garbage itself covers only 11 acres of the site). This would also be a good site for the sort of chipping and composting that Stinson Beach and Bolinas have operated uphill from Bolinas’ old "community garden" in recent years.

Nor would the landfill’s neighbors have the same noise problems they did when garbage trucks constantly bounced in and out of the landfill along Tomasini Canyon Road. Equally important, these residents would also get the benefit of living on a less-littered coast.

Environmentally, the proposal would seem to have everything going for it. The Martinelli family is amenable, so what’s the hitch? County government, which has no trouble sleeping with the Waste Management gorilla, doesn’t want to do business – even at arm’s length – with the Martinellis until the capping dispute is settled. Mind you, this is the same county government that let Waste Management take over the franchise for garbage collection on the coast soon after taking over the only remaining landfill in the county, thus creating a garbage monopoly – at least as far as West Marin is concerned.

County government contracts with Waste Management for garbage-pickup service throughout West Marin except in the towns of Bolinas and Stinson Beach, where Bolinas Public Utility District and Stinson Beach Water District do the contracting.

Both are currently reviewing their contracts with Waste Management, and both seem more concerned than the county about what the monopoly can demand in pickup costs.

Moreover, what about those West Marin residents who – if it is not too inconvenient – will properly haul their trash to a dump but won’t if the trip is too difficult. Since the only remaining landfill in Marin County is on the far side of Novato, some people refuse to drive the distance. Hence we have roadside dumping.

Moreover, southbound vehicles entering or leaving Redwood Landfill north of Novato have to go from a standing start to crossing three lanes (two northbound, one southbound) of typically 70 to 80 mph traffic on Highway 101. It’s a terrifying experience for many drivers, which further discourages them from taking their trash to the dump.

In fact, the situation is so dangerous that last week the landfill itself agreed to finance a $3 million to $3.5 million temporary "flyover" for southbound vehicles entering and leaving the landfill. However, construction won’t actually start for more than two years. And even when the flyover is finally finished, the landfill still won’t be any closer to the coast.

It puzzles me that Supervisor Steve Kinsey who has usually done a very good job for West Marin – improving fisheries, promoting agriculture, reforming onerous septic-system regulations, limiting camping on Bolinas Beach – can’t come up with a West Marin dropoff site. He insists he has no animosity toward the Martinellis and that’s not what’s holding things up. Yet everyone in West Marin and in county government knows that if the Board of Supervisors decided the coast should immediately get a dropoff site, we’d get one.

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