Point Reyes Light - October 21, 1999

County agrees to Shoreline settlement, but still no transfer station

County supervisors Tuesday approved an amendment to Shoreline Disposal's franchise to pick up garbage throughout West Marin except in Bolinas and Stinson Beach.

(Stinson Beach Water District and Bolinas Public Utility District contract separately with Shoreline for pickup service in their towns.)

Under the deal, Shoreline agreed to pay county government $244,000 for overcharging customers in 1997, 98, and 99. In fact, Shoreline may have overcharged customers by as much as $479,000 during that period because its dumping costs dropped when it switched from using West Marin Sanitary Landfill to using Redwood Landfill.

Both Shoreline and Redwood are now owned by the Waste Management corporation although neither were when the county in 1990 gave Shoreline a 25-year franchise for West Marin.

The $244,000 was a "settlement" negotiated between the county and Shoreline rather than a calculated figure, noted Jeff Rawles, program manager for the county Office of Waste Management, after a meeting Monday evening at the Station House Cafe.

Under the amendment supervisors approved Tuesday, present pickup rates will remain the same until Jan. 1, 2001. At that time, they will be reviewed and inflated in proportion with the Bay Area's Consumer Price Index. In 2004, the county will again review the rates but still be "stuck" with Shoreline for another 11 years, to use Supervisor Steve Kinsey's word last week.

On the eve of Tuesday's vote, West Marin Chamber of Commerce hosted a discussion in Point Reyes Station during which Leonard Stefanelli, vice president of Richmond Sanitary Service, said a major flaw in the franchise amendment is that it makes no provision for a transfer station in West Marin.

Not only would a transfer station allow Shoreline Disposal and coastal residents to drop off garbage on a daily basis, Richmond Sanitary would pay for building the facility, Stefanelli said.

He added that a transfer station would significantly reduce the amount of furniture and other large trash that increasingly has been dumped on West Marin roads since the Point Reyes Station landfill closed.

In fact, one county official after Monday's meeting acknowledged that he himself had to drive around a mattress on the road while en route to the chamber dinner.

And last week Audubon Canyon Ranch biologist Greg de Nevers told The Light people have been dumping weeds and brush along Bolinas-Fairfax Road. Some of the weeds are invasive non-natives and are now spreading out from the road, he warned.

Supervisor Kinsey Monday told the chamber that some of the $244,000 payment might be used to provide occasional dropoff bins but indicated much of the money will go toward educating people to dispose of their trash properly.

However, Bolinas Public Utility District director Vic Amaroso questioned whether the county can hold onto the money. "It seems to me this $244,000 actually belongs to the customers," he said. For county government to put the money in reserve "seems like an illegal tax...

"If you want money for these [garbage] problems, you'll have to go to a tax."

"Legally you can do it," rejoined Rawles from the Office of Waste Management.

Although some people at Monday's chamber meeting believed that the original 1990 franchise was invalidated when Shoreline Disposal and Redwood Landfill became part of a vertically integrated monopoly under Waste Management, Supervisor Kinsey said, the franchise "agreement has never been on the table to be addressed. The terms of the agreement have never been at issue."

The offer by Stefanelli of Richmond Sanitary included a plan for sealing the defunct West Marin Sanitary Landfill and ending the litigation now underway among Shoreline, Waste Management, the county, BPUD, Stinson Beach Water District, and the Martinelli family (who own the Point Reyes Station landfill).

The litigants disagree over who should pay how much of the estimated $4.2 million cost of sealing the landfill.

Kinsey, however, insisted that the "closure of the landfill [is] a separate issue" from the franchise agreement.

In addition, several members of the so-called Waste Brigade appointed by Kinsey questioned whether Stefanelli could do everything he proposed at the price he offered.

"I'm willing to guarantee those figures," responded Stefanelli.

Several Brigade members shot back that Stefanelli didn't know how to do the calculations, and Michael Mery of Point Reyes Station questioned whether Richmond Sanitary realized a transfer station would require an environmental-impact report.

Stefanelli said he was well award of the EIR requirement and noted he has built numerous landfills, including one in Mountain View, which at the time was the "largest in the world." That landfill serves San Francisco.

He quipped that he has spent "47 years in the used-food business" and that Mountain View residents too were skeptical until they saw the results. "We had a problem in the business. It was assumed that garbagemen were stupid," he said, especially when their ancestry was Italian.

Although Stefanelli said, "I don't want to get in a skunk situation with the supervisors and the County of Marin," he noted that the Redwood Landfill is not lined.

He warned that Shoreline's dumping costs will jump when Waste Management has to line Redwood Landfill and (at least on paper) charge Shoreline Disposal more.

Kinsey on the other hand said experts and residents have been working on the landfill issue for more than four years, and "we are on the verge of success. I'm excited about it."

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