UnGovr Transcript
iHow this transcript is madeUnGovr transcribes the official recording with automated speech-to-text, separates speakers by voice, and matches voices to the seated roster. Names and attributions are AI estimates and may contain errors.Verify any quote yourself: click anywhere in the transcript and the official video jumps to that exact moment, so you can check any quote against the recording.0:00 – 0:049 turns
This is June the 14th. Did I get that right? A roll call, Mr. Allen.
Mr. Carbajal. Here. Ms. Wythe. Here. Ms. Barr. Here Mr. Lavagnino. Here Ms. Gray.
Mr. Allen do we have any public comment?
We have one request to speak from Kate Smith.
Ms. Smith
Good morning. Chairman Gray, members of the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors I no longer stand to pledge allegiance to the flag Because there is no longer liberty and justice for all. Happy Flag Day, by the way. Truth comes as a conqueror only to those who have lost the art of welcoming it as a friend. There is deep-seated and widespread school and government corruption. Taxpayer paid lawyers collude, conspire, and cover up wrongdoing. Retaliation against whistleblowers is rampant and severe.
Santa Barbara is the perfect storm of injustice and my code name in my work is Katrina. With a sequentially designed series of small claims court proceedings, I have created a world stage and the exposure of an education political industrial complex is imminent. Our democracy is imperiled by a corporateocracy and inverted totalitarianism. We vote for politicians, but the politicians are no longer working for the people.
They are working for themselves. Our tax money is supporting a bloated bureaucracy and an old boys network. For example, your ADMHSA was caught in a $40 million billing fraud but instead of holding the director and Michael Brown accountable you let them go, let them retire double dip as they came back to take another job and you cut the services and supports of our most vulnerable citizens You decided to pay millions of dollars so that the government employees had their own private health care clinic.
In Santa Barbara City, $4.8 million were loaned directly to government employees so that they could buy their own houses when every year 50 homeless people died on the streets because they didn't have houses. I have three upcoming trials. The first one is against County Council for false arrest. The restraining orders against me so that I couldn't come to this public podium and so that I couldn't serve my own subpoenas, deuces tecum was a slap It was a strategic lawsuit against public participation. It had happened before, it'll happen again because abuse of power comes as no surprise. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
I was arrested going to a school board meeting because they didn't want me to see who they were appointing as superintendent
Thank you Ms. Smith, your time is up. Thank you. Are there any other public speakers? That was our final
request for public
comment. So we're going to go to item number one.
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Madam Chair and members of the Board, Item 1 is from the Public Works Department. It's a hearing to consider recommendations regarding the countywide siting element.
Mr. McAuliffen
Yes, good morning Madam Chair and Board Members. Thank you for the special hearing today to discuss the addendum to the countywide citing element. This addendum process commenced on March 3rd 2011 when the City of Santa Maria officially submitted this request to the Public Works Department. And if you look at the board letter it's different than last week. We've articulated essentially two options for your board today. The first one would be to approve the addendum and the resolution attached to the board letter,
Agenda Discussionitems moved / continued / pulled, click to expand
same recommendation as last week or if your board desires we can continue this item for further discussion. The board letter a little housekeeping item for you it says July 5th 2011 Public Works has been talking to the City of Santa Maria Utility staff and we mutually agreed that if your board does desire to continue with today we would like to continue with August 2nd However, in order to continue it today we'd have to articulate some significant at least one significant adverse impact beyond what's currently contained in the EIR.
So that would be something your board would need to discuss as we go through this hearing today as well. You can go to the next slide Leslie. Our presentation itself will just a quick overview of the multi-jurisdictional task force and the plan that was approved.
Mr. McLaughlin, I'm sorry to interrupt you. I just wanted to clarify what you said that the board has to identify one additional significant impact other than what was in the EIR?
Correct. That's our understanding from working with council.
And how do you expect us to do that?
We'd have to discuss any other potential adverse impacts that you feel might be out there beyond the EIR. Because the impacts that were defined in the EIR, our understanding is that process has come and gone if you will because we've gone through the environmental process, the CEQA process on the EIR.
And so County Council it's your understanding that we have that authority to identify another significant If
there are other significant adverse impacts, this is our opportunity to raise our concern if that additional impact were to exist. It doesn't mean that there is one it just means if we find there is one this is the opportunity To raise it.
And has this been? OK, I'll just let you move forward on this because it's it seems a little. I don't think I've ever been in this position where we as a board EIR has come and gone counties make comments which I have some questions about but now our only other alternative is for now the board to suggest additional adverse impacts And without a public hearing.
So, that's my concern on this process. Thank you.
Madam Chair and Supervisor, perhaps as we go through the presentation that will answer some of the questions for your board. We're going to be presenting from a county staff perspective We'll discuss the siting element process, walk you through those steps. We'll define the board questions that came up last week and those questions that we heard fell into three areas really what type of material was going to be brought to this facility so we kind of defined that as the non-hazardous impacted soils NHIS type materials, out of county waste. Certainly we heard from your board last week and also host fees so I will present on that and will present the facts that we saw currently contained in the city's approved EIR and then we'll turn the presentation over to the City of Santa Maria themselves to present on the project and answer those questions The staff available today for your board, public works staff from Resource Recovery and Waste Management, County Council certainly on the South Coast.
It's our understanding that Mr. Glenn Russell will be there, the P&D director to talk about an EIR process here at the county on how we handle those. And from the City of Santa Maria, Mr. Rick Sweet will present for the city and he is the Director of Utilities. So we take a quick look at an overview for your board. As your board knows, the multi-jurisdictional task group was created in 2002. Our current members on the multi-juristictional task group are Supervisors Farr and Supervisor Carbajal. And in 2004, a long range solid waste management plan was created and approved, and two big items were contained in there. Mr.
McLaughlin, who else? I forget who was on it before Supervisor
Farr. Madam Chair, before Supervisor Farr was Supervisor Firestone, I believe.
So then Supervisor Carbajal and Supervisor Firestone have been members of this task force. Any others from the County of Santa Barbara?
Supervisor Schwartz as well as Supervisor Marshall in the
past. Go ahead, go ahead.
And representatives from each city?
Are invited, yes. And who, Mark? Board of Supervisors... Every city is invited to participate. The City of Santa Barbara has two representatives on it and have attended throughout. Most of the jurisdictions have attended throughout with the exception of Guadalupe and Carpinteria. Yeah.
So Madam Chair, to continue on that?
Yes. Thank you.
In the Long-Range Solid Waste Management Plan two main points contained in there was the landfill we're talking about here today it was identified as a project for the Santa Maria Waste Shed and certainly the waste conversion technology facility at Tahiga's Waste Shed which your board is very familiar with was also contained in that plan
Supervisor Farr has a question. Thank you, Madam Chair. How are we defining the Santa Maria Way Shed? What are the boundaries of that?
I think, Madam Chair, this might be a good point to turn it over to staff to start doing the presentation and they can answer that question and continue on with the presentation. Great, thank you. Ms. Leslie Wells, it'll be a tag team approach. She'll start the presentation from the county's perspective then Mr. Schleich and then we'll turn it over to the City of Santa Maria.
You know, I have a couple questions about the jurisdictional task force. How often did it meet? And I'm just so surprised that this is coming up right now when it's been meeting for how many years? Ten years? Did they not meet? Did they not talk? Quarterly, quarterly.
Madam Chair, since you're magnifying the magnifying glass here. The agendas didn't have this specific item on it every time they met. It was early on there were some discussions way early on and if you go look through the agendas this item was not front and center in many of those agendas I'm trying to remember when it was ever on at least around the timing Perhaps when this so-called EIR process occurred, whether there was ever discussion on even receiving or entertaining the comments that were provided by county staff or lack thereof. So just keep in mind the Solid Waste Multijurisdictional Task Force Or committee focuses on all the issues. This is one little minor issue and I think the question is appropriate, how many of those agendas ever had this issue on there?
And that's, I think
it's a good
question.
Thank you so much. Who's going to take it? Leslie or Mark?
Madam Chair, members of the board just to address Supervisor Farr's question with regard to how do you define The Santa Maria Waste Shed, basically it's anyone who delivers waste to the city of Santa Maria's current landfill. Which typically is Guadalupe brings some material there they get about a thousand tons per year from southern San Luis Obispo County Obviously City of Santa Maria itself, the unincorporated areas surrounding the city of Santa Maria and it looks as though a little bit of waste came in from Vandenberg Air Force Base.
So typically it's last year is about 92,000 tons so if anyone who's currently using that facility is who we're defining as the Santa Maria Waste Shed
Supervisor Farr. Thank you, Madam Chair and so for southern San Luis Obispo County how far up does that go? Does it include the City of
San
Luis?
Supervisor Favre, I'm looking at a report that was for 2010 so I can't speak to really the history of the landfill. But for that particular year there was waste that came in from Paso Robles and then just San Luis Obispo County unincorporated area. Perhaps City of Santa Maria they could address that question when they come up. They may have better understanding what communities specifically in the unincorporated area
Okay, and this is for municipal solid waste?
That's
correct. And then they're also taking the NHIS, the soil, and where is that coming in from? Madam
Chair, members of the board A lot
0:15 – 0:2213 turns
of it comes from the communities in and around Santa Maria. Santa Maria probably could answer that question better than I, they do include that information on their website.
So Supervisor if you'd be happy, if it would be okay with you we could have Santa Maria answer that? It might be easier to do it that
way. That's fine but I didn't want to know the answer to that. And then they
can establish that that is accurate.
Based on the information from their website, to date they've taken 1.5 million from the Santa Maria Valley and projects outside of Santa Maria which include Goleta, Santa Barbara, Vandenberg Air Force Base, Los Angeles, Northridge, Lompoc, Port of Long Beach, Oxnard. The total that they have on their website again is about 408,600 tons and these are all in tons.
Okay so outside of Santa Barbara County it's come from Los Angeles, Northridge Long Beach and Oxnard.
That's correct.
Okay, thank you.
According to the state requirements, every county within the State Supervisor...
I'm sorry. I just can't help but to maybe pinpoint on an issue. This is a good reminder of the fact that landfills are a good enterprise business because oftentimes we think that we site landfills to deal with our own trash But it's also a money-making business, and that's why you open it up to the world to bring in trash so you can make money on it. And of course you deal and mitigate with the impacts and what have you. I just say this because what's become abundantly clear to me unless I'm misunderstanding it is that this is a business enterprise that is to make money For a municipality, it's not just to deal with the existing trash needs of the region or the area. It's much broader than that. So it's important to put that context to it.
So I just, it is something that has become abundantly clear to me.
Thank you Supervisor. Ms. Wells?
So according to the state requirements, every county has to demonstrate that they have 15 years of waste disposal capacity. This is either based on existing facilities or planned facilities and how you demonstrate that is through a document called the Countywide Siting Element. Just as an FYI we currently have capacity for 18 years with our existing facilities.
The state statute also designates the responsibility to county staff to prepare these documents To respond to any requests for amendments and to usher it through the process of approval from each of the jurisdictions and ultimately, the state of California. If an entity wants to develop a new or expand existing solid waste disposal facility that facility must be included in the countywide siting element via an addendum which is what we have here today.
So in order to initiate this process Sends a project description to county staff to begin the process. So very briefly because the City of Santa Maria is here and they're going to give a much more detailed presentation, what they are proposing to do is develop a new landfill at Los Flores Ranch. They've purchased the property in 2006 The ranch itself is 1,774 acres. They're proposing site disturbance at 617 acres of which 286 acres would be designated for landfill use.
What's indicated in the EIR is that a rate of 161 tons per year that they would accept. The facility has the capacity to provide 90 years of disposal Another step in the process is there's another group called the Local Task Force. This is different from the multi-jurisdictional Solid Waste Group. The task force is made up primarily of public works staff from each of the jurisdictions in the County of Santa Barbara. So as part of this process, the state statute says that the local task force has to look at a proposed facility and its impact on the region And how is the proponent doing in terms of their progress in meeting the diversion requirement, which is the 50% diversion of waste that's generated.
So the local task force, the county coordinated two meetings for the task force as a result there were three comments that came out of that process. The first was the recommendation at the City of Santa Maria implement Citywide a curbside collection of green waste, which they've indicated they are going to begin in July of 2011. The second recommendation was that they implement a small business hazardous waste collection program. Currently the city does not have that we felt in order It would it's a good idea as a landfill operator to provide as many opportunities as possible to appropriately manage hazardous waste so The city has indicated that they will be implementing this program in January of 2012. The third recommendation was a little broader, it asked that the city rather than developing a 90-year landfill develop in phases such that along the way they can monitor other recycling composting or conversion technology opportunities as each of their five year permit cycle continued.
So looking back historically, how many times has the Multi-Jurisdictional Solid Waste Task Group heard about this project? We went back and looked at agendas. It's been discussed a total of eight times and this includes being part of the long term waste plan that was ultimately approved by this group in 2004. City of Santa Maria has brought updates as they've proceeded with this project to this group The city prepared an environmental impact report that was ultimately certified by their council in April of 2010. As Scott mentioned, the county did submit comments on the EIR. Those were submitted in August of 2009. There were comments from many different departments in the county.
Santa Maria indicated that they've held three community meetings, distributed press releases and posted the proposed project on their city website. So going back to the state requirements and
addendum. Supervisor Wolf has a question.
0:22 – 0:3112 turns
So this goes back to my earlier comment and question, and that is that has to do with the supervisors having an opportunity to review the comments that were made given that this is in the county. The board was never apprised of that correct?
Chair Gray, board members. The typical way that the county staff has coordinated responses to EIR is not only this one but other EIRs proposed by others is that all county departments write a letter of comment and forward it on to long-range planning. And then, long-range planning at that point would forward it back to the jurisdiction that's proposing the project.
Regarding the ins and outs of that, as you recall, long-range planning was in P&D, it is in PND but there was a time that it wasn't in PND. You know I think that would have or that could have been or should have been where this issue may have came to the board. I think Dr. Russell if he's in Santa Barbara monitoring as you said he would maybe on in the elevator on his way up to help answer this question as well.
You know, it's apparent to me that this is probably something that should have come to the board. And so I would suggest to CEO Waller that in the future especially a project of this magnitude and impact Because I have read the comments made by our county staff that this item does come to the board. This isn't in my district and so I defer to Supervisor Farr, but when we've had things like this in my district big project That has come from another municipality. I do believe that it's important that it comes to the board for review especially now at this point when Our options are very limited Thank you
Supervisor Farr. Thank you, Madam Chair. Well actually this is not in my district I think it's in Supervisor Gray's district but that being said I think that it's a little misleading to say even though that it was on the multi-jurisdictional solid waste task force agenda eight times what does that mean because sometimes it was just a report and not knowing what the process was I kept thinking at some point in time the process was going to be That it was going to come to the border, that the multi-jurisdictional group would be required to take some particular stand on it. I know that the city was hoping that the group would take a vote on it but we didn't and so it was very much a surprise to me when this showed up on the A agenda and that this Somehow something that only opportunity that we might have.
That's why we're here today, but was my unfamiliarity with the process and certainly once this surfaced I think deciding of a new landfill I
I'm not sure what the exact answer is, CEO Waller but we may want to look at our procedure in general. I think there's some routine EIR comment letters that we provide but I think when you have major projects I think somehow it would be great to codify or FYI to the board in a timely fashion. As soon as that letter is sent off, even if we don't have to approve it because it's okay our staff do their professional work and they send it off but it should come to the board with at the earliest agenda thereafter. I mean some might argue before but thereafter Before that time period ends, so that one it's a FYI. It raises the issue to our attention and if need be it can allow the body to ask or raise any questions based on either the process or the actual input being provided So just I think it's worth giving some thought in terms of our procedure how we want to handle this in the future
Chair Gray, Supervisor, I think you make excellent points and I also think that it would be helpful to understand how we've modified the process for EIR responses since 2009. Currently the way it's done on major projects long-range planning continues to put together the various responses but those do come to the CEO's office at this point for major projects And what our practice has been is to ensure that one, whoever's district it is aware of it. But it sounds to me like it may be appropriate to have a little bit wider distribution of that so we'll certainly look at the process and And as appropriate, come back to your board. But yes we have recognized the fact that we do need to have a little bit more centralized response and I see Mr. Russell's with us and perhaps he'd like to elaborate on that.
And before Mr. Russell begins this project is in my district and I have been sent the city of Santa Maria has kept me up We've talked about it. I assume this was so well covered because Of the task force and the folks that were on the task force. I guess you never assume, but... I'm surprised that everyone wasn't aware of what was going on. So I'm just surprised. We run our offices differently.
Madam Chair, the only thing that I remember about this item in the Solid Waste Task Force is it came before us at one point And I remember raising one issue and that is about Santa Barbara County being able to I have some kind of priority for trash consideration in the landfill and that's one of the suggestions I gave. And again, I don't know if it ever got folded into the comments no comments was a before or after the comments. I don't even recall but that's the only discussion I ever recall having had on this subject matter at the Solid Waste Task Force.
And did you, you didn't go when Naomi was supervisor. Did you go along with her?
I went to a few.
Mr. Russell.
Good morning Madam Chair, Supervisors. Very briefly I would just like to talk about the process as it applied to this particular issue referring specifically to a comment letter from the county of August 3rd 2009. This comment letter went through our normal responsible agency review process which you've discussed a little bit today Different letters from the different departments were brought together and presented to the CEO who then wrote a cover letter and sent that cover letter in. The only real comment about the citing element was a comment on the project description, and it basically says the draft EIR should include a statement that indicates conformance with the County of Santa Barbara countywide citing element chapter 5.0 citing criteria.
At that time, I can only surmise that it was the CEO's decision that it was not necessary to brief the board because that would have been the decision that would have needed to be made at that time for a board briefing to take place. I was not there when the decision was made but it would've been the CEO's decision and today it would also still be the CEO'S decision and as far as changing That would be most helpful, I think. If I could just step in? You know,
0:31 – 0:4123 turns
As I read the comment letters, I found some to be incredibly interesting. One from LAFCO that talked about The fact that they at the time that they were not seeking annexation and Mr. Brayman had raised some questions about that we had a letter from the fire department that said that this is within the fire departments jurisdiction and that wasn't mentioned in the EIR, and We had you know significant issues in my mind from P&D about the siting of the landfill so I guess I would beg to differ. And so, what I would say is that I'm pleased to hear that we've modified the process and the procedure especially for these major projects so that the entire board can read some of these comment letters from our departments.
Thank you.
Other comments? Where are we?
Chairwoman Gray, I'll continue on. Again according to state statute an addendum to the citing element must be approved by the county and a majority of the cities within the county that has a majority of the population And if an entity decides to take no action, then it's deemed that that entity approved the citing element. So as of today all of the cities have either approved via taking a positive action or by indicating that they weren't going to take action thus it would be deemed approved.
So an entity has two choices if it's brought to their elected body. One is to approve the addendum to the citing element, the second is to disapprove and in order to disapprove we have to provide evidence in the record of one or more significant adverse impacts to the County of Santa Barbara. Following that any person can file with Superior Court for a writ of mandate for review of the decision to disapprove.
I have a question on that one. Any person, so does that mean person or does it mean jurisdiction
like county or city? Chairwoman Gray, I believe the statue reads any person. So an individual taxpayer could do
this then. Council?
Yes and a public entity as well.
Thanks.
Madam Chair, shouldn't we just get that boilerplate language and put on any issue? Because anybody can sue on anything at any time. I'm just wondering why it's here this time. It's like...
You know really sometimes you have jurors.
Sometimes
you have
to have... But oftentimes you could just take that and put it on anything. Anybody can raise any
issue. Sorry to be sloppy on this but sometimes you have to have standing in order to sue. Thank you counsel for nodding your head.
Next.
You know
So at this time, your board has two options. As I mentioned earlier you can adopt the resolution which approves the addendum as currently written or could choose to continue the item until August 2nd which would allow staff time to continue to research to try to identify other possible significant adverse impacts to the county At this point, Mr. Schleich is going to try to speak to the three specific items that your board had brought up at the June 7th board meeting.
Thank you Leslie. Last Tuesday your board raised these three particular issues. In discussing the administrative item, they had to do with the non-hazardous impacted soil and we've heard a little bit about the volumes that are currently going to this city of Santa Maria landfill. The source of the waste that would be going to this facility and more importantly out of county. And I think this ties into Supervisor Carbajal's question regarding preserving space for county waste for the entire county of Santa Barbara's waste stream.
And then the third issue had to do with host fees. The non-hazardous impacted soil or otherwise known as the NHIS program is a source of material from old oil development sites. It's typically some soil, lots of soil with some oil in it. It is below a certain threshold or standard therefore considered non-hazardous. It's currently taking to the existing Santa Maria landfill as alternative daily cover.
That's an operational term, every day at the end of the day by law you're required to cover the trash with dirt or alternative daily cover that requires an approval by the local enforcement agency and this material is approved for that. They actually use most of it for closing a portion of their landfill and they could go into greater detail to bring it to final closure.
This program has been approved by the Regional Water Quality Control Board at this site and the county and the city currently have a MOU agreement between the two jurisdictions that addresses impacts to the county road systems because obviously these oil sites tend to be in rural areas, and as they make their way to the City of Santa Maria's landfill they go over county roads In the EIR, the city is proposing to really no change. They're going to continue to use it as alternative daily cover under the same permit conditions that currently exist.
The EIR has some numbers of related truck trips as well as tonnage and direction or source of material The maximum daily trips that were analyzed was 250 trips per day, and that could bring up to 5,000 tons per day. They believe or at least the EIR indicated that most of this material would come from the north of the site. This site is slightly south of Santa Maria.
It's on the grade as you head towards Los Alamos. And we talked to the city staff throughout the week regarding this issue And regarding the current MOU and I believe that both staffs agree that this MOU could continue based on this environmental document or would continue. Out of county waste, Leslie talked about the waste that's currently coming from San Luis Obispo County Again the city probably could clarify, but I believe most of this waste is what I would call self-haul. It's not a jurisdiction's decision to bring all of their municipal waste here.
You know franchise haulers collecting like we have in the Santa Maria Valley, we direct the waste to a particular site. For Orchid residents that is currently directed to or it's directed to the City of Santa Maria's landfill. However people clean out their garage they have gardeners They do reconstruction projects, what have you. And typically they'll haul their own material and I believe that's how that thousand tons may have been generated from San Luis Obispo County.
Madam Chair? Supervisor Carbajal? I believe the EIR didn't cover other than South Hall out of county trash.
Supervisor Carbajal, I'll get... That's my next point. So when I looked through the EIR and tried to identify how they analyzed out of county, pretty much did a document search on the word San Luis Obispo. And I only found two locations that showed up in the document. One of them was in the project description and they just indicated that they would accept waste from southern San Luis Obispo County including the community of Napomo.
It really didn't go into analyzing it in many other sections of the document. Contrarily, when they looked at the Tejigas Waste Shed, they anticipated a closure date at the time. They anticipated a volume of trash that would come from the Tejigas Waste Shed and included it in traffic and circulation air quality and various other site parts of the document. So back to Supervisor Carball's question. To me, it looks like they took some time and effort to identify the county's waste shed in their environmental document and did not consider out-of-county waste in a significant way.
Madam Chair?
Supervisor
Carball? Ms. LaSalle, our counsel on this matter. So if Santa Maria in the future wanted to bring in the gravy train or the solid waste from out of county in terms of out-of county trash They would have to do an addendum to the ZIR,
0:41 – 0:4613 turns
correct? If they're changing the project in a significant way that's when under CEQA you are required to do and addendum. And there's always some debate is it a big enough change to mandate the addendum So it's not an absolute bright line, but if they were to make a significant change that
would impact... That hasn't been
analyzed. It's not analyzed. It would impact traffic, air pollution, noise. It seems like it would impact so many things that it most likely would require an addendum. But unless I see the actual change
Thank you. Maybe when Santa Maria gets up here, they could also touch about their plans about out of county trash and why it wasn't analyzed and what do they how do they view the addendum issue? Should they go in that direction?
Thank you, Supervisor. Other questions? OK, back to you.
And then the final question that came up last Tuesday had to deal with the issue of host fees Typically, you have to have some jurisdictional authority over the project. Meaning the project would have to be in the County of Santa Barbara and as you know this land is actually owned by the City of Santa Maria. Typically jurisdictions have done this to preserve space for themselves and to make sure they had local control.
It's a rather hot button issue as people run out of landfill space and where do I take my waste? And there is legislation that is currently being proposed called AB 1178. The County Supervisors Association of California has actually taken a position of oppose unless amended. So we're following that issue very closely, and it talks specifically about limitations of waste from other jurisdictions and the implementation of host fees.
Host fees like I mentioned before are typically parts of conditional use permits and are rarely if ever used as a condition of approval of a siting element. The issue of host fee, we again talked with the City of Santa Maria staff during the week about this issue. They understand the need to preserve airspace for our community, our county and would be willing to work with us on developing policies and or ordinances if that's appropriate to deal with host fees in the importation of waste.
I believe at this point the City of Santa Maria has a presentation they'd like to do. And before I turn it over to them, is there any other questions I could answer for you?
Ask Mr. Schleich just make sure you bring that to the Ledge Committee in terms of the county's...
The 1175?
Yeah, and I believe that's Speaker Pro Tem Fiorimala who is pursuing that and to make sure we get the modifications to the bill or oppose it so. We'll do that.
Mr. Sweet you're going to take this.
Thank you.
Good morning Chairman Gray and members of the Board of Supervisors. I'd like to thank you for having this special hearing during a very busy time for you, I know it's incredibly inconvenient for you so I'd like to thank you personally for taking this time. I would like to thank your staff We've been on the phone every day since last Tuesday trying to figure this out and coming forth with a presentation for you today. I think this effort exemplifies a long list of successful joint efforts with those of your staff, and some of those are like rehabilitation in Santa Maria River Levee, using NHIS funds to fix county roads, and cleaning the downstream channel at Twitchell Reservoir to prevent flooding in the Santa Maria Valley.
Always work well with your staff, and I certainly appreciate their efforts. As our goal is to supply you with appropriate information so that you can amend the county's landfill siting element to include the Santa Maria Integrated Waste Management Facility at Los Flores Ranch. And here with me today is Mayor Lavinino, City Attorney Gil Trujillo Utilities Engineer Steve Kahn, Richard Dalton who was prepared with RINCON who prepared the environmental impact report. Jeff Claren who is our Solid Waste Manager and is familiar with operational issues because I don't know everything about operations. And Paul Karp who has actually preceded me here at utilities and was in the very early process of What happened at the multi-site jurisdictional solid waste task group.
I've asked the mayor to provide some introductory remarks, and then we'll run through a PowerPoint presentation and I will ask Richard Dalton to introduce some of the appropriate slides having to do with the environmental process. Then we'll be glad to entertain questions.
Mayor?
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Thank you Madam Chair. I'll be very brief. There's only five points that I would like to make and they're very important to the City of Santa Maria and to the County of Santa Barbara, obviously. Number one is that the city of Santa Maria landfill is a disposal site for all refuse in the Santa Maria Valley. Number two is that the landfill will reach capacity in three to five years so this is a crucial decision you're going to make today Number three, all eight cities and the county recognized the need for a new facility years ago and over the last 10 years have been working in cooperation and coordination to site a new landfill.
Number four, significant progress has been made including the analysis of alternative sites, purchase of a site and the certification of an EIR. And I think all of us know that's not an easy thing to do. We have purchased the land site and the EIR has been certified. And number five, which is very, very important, is we're hoping that the county will amend the siting element and allow the city to proceed because at this time there's no feasible alternative that can be implemented prior to the present landfill reaching capacity.
Mr. Sweet will now make the city's PowerPoint presentation and then we have sufficient staff here to I hope answer any questions you may have.
Thank you mayor.
Madam Chair I have a question for Mr. Sweet how much of your current trash comes in from out of the county right now?
Well, it was indicated where 92,000 tons a year and last year about 1,000 tons came in. So slightly more than one percent. Thank you. So it's very small portion. It's basically... That's very helpful. Thank you. Fits in the back of somebody's pickup truck.
Thank you. I just, because
I think
that this
is really
important that we understand the numbers here. I'm looking at the project description in your EIR
And it said that in 2005 the existing Santa Maria Regional Landfill accept approximately 130,000 tons of waste for disposal. That's assuming it's open 306 operating days a year equates to an average of 426 tons per day. So you're saying you're accepting how much now?
92,000. So tons a
year? Yes Okay so you've gone down?
Yes.
So where did this number come from then that's 130,000?
Because the amount of diversion has actually gone up and C&D remember during those times construction demolition waste and I'm going to look at Jeff to help me with this. Construction and demolition activities were extremely We were doing a lot of construction at that time. So there was a lot more construction and demolition waste, and it's amazing how much waste can come from that. We have since...that has gone...construction activity has gone down plus we are engaged in significant diversion of that material now.
It goes through a whole different process so the actual waste stream at the landfill is less than it was then
Okay and the 92,000 tons that's from all sources. That's not just the MSW it's the soils and everything that you're taking in?
Just a reference. That's
just trash okay so how much are you taking in then total?
Including the NHIS program? Uh-huh. What did we do last year Jeff? We had 250,000 tons in NHIS.
Okay and that's added to the 92 thousand.
Correct It should be, and we'll get into it a little bit. But the NHIS product is done completely separate. And it's done...it doesn't go in portions where municipal waste would go because it's under a separate requirement. It is done as part of a closure that is required by the regional board. So it's not part of the disposal process. It's actually part of the closure process.
Okay well I'll have some more questions
about this
later. Thank you.
So in 1950s, the Santa Maria Landfill was opened at its present location. And it serves the Santa Maria Valley Waste Shed which is orchid and all the unincorporated areas in the valley and the city of Santa Maria. Which was noted we receive a small amount of waste from outside. The Santa Maria Regional Landfill reached its capacity in 2015 based on current waste flow and landfilling methods.
The Santa Maria Regional Landfill presently is a 291-acre facility. We have some really great, interesting recycle and recapture programs. We use landfill gas to produce electricity for Marion Medical Center. It produces almost all the electricity for Marion Medical. We have a Green Waste Collection Program and we're implementing curbside green waste on July, actually June 28th. We have a Recycle Center.
We have a Household Hazardous Waste Facility, Concrete and Recycling Facility and Agricultural Plastic Recycling which if those of you familiar with the area you drive through you see plastic over everything and that's got to go somewhere and it was before being landfilled and now we divert that And a textile recycling facility where we actually take product that comes from thrift stores and instead of them throwing in the landfill, we actually recycle it by sending it overseas to third world countries or recycling it into racks. That's kind of a new and innovative process we're involved in here and it's additional to what you usually see in the recycling process.
Mr. Swede how do you recycle the agricultural plastic? I'm thrilled to hear that because that just bugged me.
What generally happens is we bail it. It's bailed on site and then it's shipped off for reprocessing, which generally means they make pellets out of it, make plastic pellets and then they reformulate it. I'd like to say we make lots of money on it, but in most recycling we only lose a little bit on that one. It costs us about $40 a ton to process it and we charge $35 a ton to receive it so we lose about five dollars a ton on that
process.
0:53 – 0:598 turns
The Multi-Jurisdictional Solid Waste Task Group was created to provide the communities with Santa Barbara County as a forum to discuss and plan long term solid waste management strategies and facilities in 2001. We've heard a lot about that today, and the principles of the task group was providing local control, regional service, waste diversion, economic efficiencies, reliability, and flexibility.
And it was the recommendation in 2004 of the Multi-Jurisdictional Solid Waste Task Group that a new landfill should be sited in northern Santa Barbara County prior to the closure of existing Santa Maria Regional Landfill. And the City of Santa Maria was assigned the lead in this pursuit. So when we went out to look for a site, We looked at landfill design, visual impact, cultural resources, access, infrastructure, land use compatibility, geology, topography, hydrology and biological resources.
And we did a siting study to find sites that met that criteria and we found four sites in the Santa Maria Waste Shed. And in 2006, we purchased 1,774 acres called Los Flores Ranch. We purchased it from Chevron. And it's at the top of Solomon Grade where that star is. And if you go up over Solomon Grade, there's actually a freeway off-ramp and for years I never even really noticed it was there but if you take a look at it that is the primary access to this site. It's directly off the freeway not off of Dominion Road as some people have indicated it might be. Dominion Road does border the site but it's used for recreational access.
The waste access would be right directly off the freeway and that off ramp there. Historical uses were oil extraction and cattle grazing. Cattle grazing continues on the site as well as recreational facility uses. It's a 90 years solid waste capacity and that's based on the flows that were talked about before where it's the Santa Maria Waste Shed until Tahecus closes, and then it's the Tahecus Waste Shed included in those flows. So we actually designed it for actually Santa Barbara County Refuse if that's what needed to happen you have You're pursuing a different process for waste conversion, but we actually accommodated the waste stream from that area if it's needed.
So Mr. Sweet, this 90 years includes the Tahequas you're projecting? Wow!
Supervisor Farr? Actually I do have a question about that. In the EIR it said that you were projected to open at approximately 500 tons per day which is equivalent of 161 thousand tons per year assuming you operate 322 days a year Now, this was when this was done some years ago. But you're already taking in over twice that at 342 thousand tons a year?
That does not... NHIS is not included in that. Remember, NHIS is not municipal waste it's actually closure material.
Okay but the closure material seems to be eventually You know, it's going to be five times what the municipal waste is. So I'm just wondering how we accommodate that in the lifespan of the project and that's even before we start adding in possible future Tejigas? I'll
be glad to talk to you...I'm gonna try to explain that later in the process because I think there's certainly more to that story on NHIS and why it's that way. And the truth is, I'll just go into it.
Okay great thank you.
NHIS we charge $25 a ton for disposal okay? And that's at our present site because it's part of the closure process. It's not part of how we handle municipal waste. It actually material we're required to have to close the landfill. We were going to pay for soil to be imported the landfill at $10 a ton. So we found this material, which was acceptable. In fact, the regional board was looking for a location for it so it could clean up some other sites and so it became apparent that we could use this instead.
It's part of the closure process because $75 a ton Handle municipal waste. So I can't possibly take NHIS at $25 a ton into a municipal waste area at $75 a ton. It just doesn't make sense, you can't afford to lose that much money on it. So while NHIS the numbers are in there, it doesn't make economic sense to take it for that purpose. The only thing we're looking at NHIS presently from an operational standpoint is to clean up Oil operations at that site.
So while there are numbers in there for NHIS, economically it just doesn't make sense. It doesn't pencil out to take those type of numbers in there.
0:59 – 1:0722 turns
But you're not talking about revising those numbers then?
The environmental document is certified. I'm not talking about revising the numbers. I certainly can enter a discussion with you about it, but I'm not proposing to amend the environmental document.
But I think that it probably gets to air quality issues and transportation circulation issues doesn't it?
Certainly and I think as we've noted before we have Negotiated with county transportation in regards to how we offset those transportation impacts. I think it's worked out really well for both of us, quite frankly. We've rebuilt some roads that were sure in dire need of help and we give the county a certain amount of cash value for maintenance of roads in this area through...
Well, I'm not familiar
with that but I'll let
you go ahead and
proceed. I think it's both county staff and us thinking I think we did that
before she came on
board. Yes, we did! So
where are we?
I think we're at commercial solid waste vehicles only at Los Flores. Otherwise, if you're cleaning out your garage, you will still take it out to our site, present site of the Santa Maria landfill and there'll be a transfer facility out there. So
that becomes a transfer site as that one's closed?
Right. And the advantage to that is we get to source separate your material when it comes in the door. Like in
Santa Barbara.
I'm assuming. What happens is if you come in and you've been cleaning your yard, and it looks like most of the back of your truck is filled with yard waste, we don't put that in the landfill. We divert that to another part of our site. We source separate it, and then we send it over for composting. If you have mostly construction demolition materials, we sort that off, and it's handled through a construction demolition recycling. So that gives us an opportunity to use some source selection at our site.
So all the recycling green waste will still occur at our existing site. So if, well we say what it looks like and I'm sorry the picture's not quite as good as I was hoping. The access road and the scale house and the solid waste in other areas are shown in the yellow so in the first 25 years you can see it's not a very substantial piece of the entire property that's involved in it And you can see the access coming off the freeway as that thin line going up to the larger site there.
And we also use it for passive recreation, it's primarily walkers and runners and horseback and mountain biking out there presently. So an environmental, and I'll be glad to take anyone out there. As most of you know, I'm pretty enthusiastic about that biking thing so.
So Supervisor Carpajal here is worried about them. He thought you said mountain lions.
There are mountain lions.
Well there's a road called Cat Canyon there and it came to me one night why it was called that. Environmental impact report. Environmental impact report was produced to study the impacts on the project and identify mitigation measures that offset those impacts. I'm going to ask Richard Dalton with RINCON to take us from here.
Good morning Chair Gray, members of the board. Richard Dalton, principal with RINCOM Consultants in San Luis Obispo. We prepared the environmental impact report under contract to the city and I want to just briefly go over the comprehensive nature of the EIR and some of our conclusions and then I'd be happy to answer any questions that you might have about specific components of the study.
So as I mentioned, the EIR was a very comprehensive analysis that looked at all of the issue areas in the state's CEQA checklist focusing on full build-out of all phases of the project over its full lifespan. This includes site disturbance impacts from all phases, so topics such as biological resources, sensitive species and habitat and cultural resources that relate to the amount of site disturbance which is about 617 acres as was mentioned previously.
And we also looked at the operations of the landfill under a year 2012 initial scenario and then 2032 peak scenario for waste acceptance. I'll discuss some of those issues in a moment. Next slide please. We identified several mitigation measures to reduce the impacts we identified as potentially significant back to a less-than-significant level. One that I wanted to highlight is a requirement to prepare an open space management plan.
This is a plan that would be produced for the entire Los Flores Ranch, and the idea here is that with about 617 acres disturbed and about 1,776 acres for the entire property There is a significant amount of open space and other resources that could be managed. We wanted to take advantage of that opportunity and coordinate it with the passive recreational use of the site. So there's a requirement for mitigation wetlands and other sensitive habitat types, riparian maritime chaparral And Valley Needlegrass grassland at prescribed ratios of restoration that would occur throughout this open space area. It's a requirement for long-term adaptive management and monitoring of those restoration areas in coordination of that effort with a qualified biologist, with the past recreational use of the park.
I also want to mention that although we do prescribe several mitigation measures for impacts, there are also several features built into the project that really have the effect of reducing impacts that we also describe in the EIR. One of those is the liner system at the bottom of waste to capture Any contamination, also leachate collection system to remove any leachate from water passing through the waste prism and reacting chemically and biologically to reduce contaminants. And to assure that's controlled.
A methane gas collection system for future gas that could be used for a future gas to energy project. There's a site identified within the project site that's reserved for that purpose if that comes to pass and the groundwater and gas monitoring system to collect data, identify any issues if they do arise and have corrective actions to deal with them at that point So after a series of public workshops and hearings, and receipt of comment letters from the public and agencies in responses to those comments. Finally I was certified by the City Council on April 20th of 2010.
The next steps in the environmental process now are to produce that open space management plan and to submit for approval from the Army Corps of Engineers, Fish and Game, Fish and Wildlife Service, and other regulatory agencies. There's been a lot of regulatory agency involvement and oversight to date with respect to the resources identified on the site. Other required approvals for the project to move forward, CalRecycle and through the County of Santa Barbara local enforcement agency site facility permit and other permits that still need to be obtained. Regional Water Quality Control Board oversight and... Supervisor
Carbajal?
Thank you. I'm sorry for interrupting you. So, I assume council and P&D staff these are other areas where the county will have an opportunity to give input as part of this process even though they are obviously there are other agencies. It's obvious but I just want to make sure that's the case.
1:07 – 1:1318 turns
And the last thing I wanted to mention was a permit to operate from Santa Barbara Air Pollution Control District
Excuse me one
second.
When your next step slide talked about producing an open space management plan and submitting approval to some other agencies, this is an all-inclusive because I think that there's some other plans that you have to the city has to come up with as far as mitigation on some of the
There's a number of mitigation programs that become conditions of approval for the project that the city would need to comply with.
Okay, I just wanted to make sure we weren't missing that.
Thank you.
Supervisor Farr?
Actually,
I'll go ahead and let
him finish. Thank you. And I think this was dealt with by Mr. Sweet, but just a note here that the Integrated Waste Management Facility was designed to accept NHIS as does the existing landfill and for the purposes of the environmental review we assumed as a reasonable worst-case scenario for disclosure purposes a fairly large amount of acceptance of NHIS material. The city staff It's now anticipating likely won't be reached, certainly not as municipal solid waste disposed in the active landfill area.
A few words about the waste stream. I understand that's a concern. The EIR did evaluate the acceptance of waste from Tahegas landfill at a greater level with detail as staff, county staff mentioned than we did from southern San Luis Obispo County. The reason being that acceptance from Tahegas is... We know the tonnage that would be. We can put a finer point on that for the purposes of our study.
Southern San Luis Obispo County waste shed acceptance would be a little bit more conceptual. So what we did was we rolled that into the amount of waste that would be coming from the north, which I think was mentioned was assumed to be 75% of the waste stream coming into the landfill, which would be from points in Santa Maria and points north of that. But we did not break that out separately and staff, county staff is correct to note that we didn't have the data to say that's going to be such-and-such a percentage What we did look at operationally was accepting that peak tonnage from both the south and the north. What does that mean for landfill gas production, greenhouse gases that are associated with that operations at the landfill? And traffic to and from the landfill, which is going to be from a regional perspective an impact on the mainline segment of Highway 101 regardless of where that out-of-county source might might be.
I'll turn it over to Mr. Sweet unless you have any questions first?
Supervisor? Yes, thank you. Yes in one of your previous slides you talked about the fact that it looked like the hydrocarbon impacted soil was just going to be coming from the site and the remediation needs to be done on the site. Is that correct? Yeah but you know in EIR it says just from NHIS trucks an average daily trip starting out of 48 and then 20 years down the line in 32 it says up to 500. So why would we be showing any average daily trips if we're just moving from one part of the site to another?
I'm sorry if I misled you that the moving from one part of the site to another, I didn't intend to convey that if I did While the precise sources of NHS material aren't identified because they could be various sources from oil fields within the Santa Maria Valley or outside of it, what we do is we take a peak assumption about the accepted NHS material and look at the impacts on traffic from that with an assumption of 75% from the north and 25% from the south. And look at the operational impacts of accepting that tonnage at the landfill.
Okay, and why did you then distribute it both in the short term and in the long term? The 75 from the north and 25 from the south when they already seem to be taking a lot of material from the south.
At the time of the study, the data that we were provided with showed that the majority of the material was coming from the Santa Maria Valley and that data was extrapolated into the future at that point there really wasn't any data or Precise sources of material identified at that time.
Okay, and then when you did your traffic and circulation study as far as I could tell it appeared to be primarily in the Santa Maria City area because we were talking about the transfer of the refuse from the existing site to the new site so how far out did your traffic study area extend?
We basically studied in the city of Santa Maria and the points immediately outside the city of Santa Maria. So all the rest of the impacts would be impacts to the main line from a regional perspective, to the highway. And when you look at the volumes on Highway 101 even with the peak production and peak trips of NHIS it's a drop in the bucket compared to the total volumes on Highway 101.
That's even true on this segment of 101 through this county, which is much lower volumes than other segments of 101.
Okay but you also have risk of upset and other issues if you're taking all these truck trips coming from the south to the South County so that wasn't evaluated?
1:13 – 1:2630 turns
Not directly. We do talk about the different safety mechanisms that would need to be in place to assure a reduction of impacts with regard to safe hauling.
Okay. And then just to kind of continue on, with the remediation of the oil activity that's onsite now, EIR said that there is a pipeline or two pipelines that would need to be stopped and moved in order for this to begin? Is that correct? I
believe that's the case.
Okay. But that there are existing oil extraction operations that could continue while this is going on? Yes, that's correct. There's also a plan for the cleanup and also for the cost sharing on that, that needs to be established. Has that plan been finalized?
I would defer to city staff on that point.
Okay well before you leave and they come back to the mic, I just want to ask one more thing. I know when this item came before the Santa Maria City Council that there was a number of public commenters Concerned about water quality and impacts to groundwater. And so this kind of gets to the liner that would be used in this leachate system, is that what it's called? It kind of collects things and then drains it into a storage tank someplace. So what happens to it after that?
Oh, I'd have to defer that comment to the city as well for how they intend to process it because it can be collected and stored and then disposed in appropriate facility at that point.
And what is that? And where is that?
You know typically...
Okay thank you.
Other questions? Thank you. Mr. Sweet back to you. What
happens with leachate, not just at the Santa Maria landfill is you take it out of where it's stored and which is a A facility that has both tanks and containment. And then it's put in the water truck, and spread back over the lined area. So it either recirculates through the leachate system or the water portion of that dissipates into the air. And the solid portion which was in the landfill to begin with, which municipally retains in the landfill.
So Madam Chair, you mainly move it from the bottom to the top.
Well yeah but the water part dissipates and that's what you're concerned about is the water and the mobility part that the water provides. It can't move anywhere without water. Okay
thank you. Mr. Sweet? Supervisor Wolf did you want to say something?
Follow up on Supervisor Farr's question, and I'm going to ask you Mr. Sweet because I'm a little confused with the second bullet. It says that you anticipate city staff anticipates that only the NHIS from Los Flores will be deposited at the landfill but I thought what I heard from the numbers that were presented by Supervisor Farr That it will continue throughout the life of the landfill.
And so I'm not clear why that would be if you just are going to do the cleanup at the initial, which I'm assuming will be at the initial stage. So can you just answer that again?
Sure, I'll do my best. Thank you. The EIR does not necessarily evaluate the operational It provides a worst-case scenario, and then it evaluates those impacts. From an operational standpoint and a monetary standpoint, those operational impacts to do that just doesn't make sense to us. We can't afford to do it that way. It's a different process than is at our site. Doesn't mean it wasn't analyzed that way in the EIR, but it does mean I can't possibly afford to do it that way.
And the cleanup will occur as the site develops. I can only handle disposal of so much material based on the amount of landfill that's been constructed, so I can't take all the material from the entire site at the initial stages of the landfill.
I guess what I'm saying is when I saw that bullet, I thought that was positive. And then what I thought I was hearing was that you might continue to bring in NHIS from other places but that conflicted with the financial piece. So now I'm understanding your position. While
it's indeed possible, I'd be crazy to do it
though.
Did we miss something there?
We're supposed to be at Waste Stream I think.
Yeah, the other thing that was... So we've covered this quite a bit, but I do want you to be completely aware because I know that it was a comment from Supervisor Carbajal. Because I certainly remember that meeting and remember that comment. That you wanted some assurance that the county had some first right of refusal or some access to the site. And in fact the site was designed exactly for that.
The element is a state mandated and includes all solid waste facilities in the county. And the addendum to include, we would like the addendum to include the integrated waste management facility at Los Flores. It's been reviewed and commented on by the county local task force and we talked about that in the county presentation about the three things and how we're moving through those. We received recommendation from the LTF and Solid Waste Operations on the city and those were those three items.
And here's the three items. The city should implement a curbside green waste collection program, and we are deep in it right now. We're distributing 17,500 containers over the next two weeks and we will start collection the second week from now. A business-generated hazardous waste. Households has this waste program for a long time, but adding the business aspect to it we're doing in winter of 2012. We're working on that right now
Madam Chair, how are you going to deal with agriculture pesticide issue? Is that the same as a South County issue when they reach a certain level of product they have to deal with it themselves by arranging a private contractor to deal with it but up to a certain amount you take it. That's correct
There's commercial haul limits that they're allowed to haul to our site for, and we would stay with those haul limits. Once it becomes a commercial hazardous waste then they have to deal with the commercial hazardous waste.
So I would imagine that would be a bigger issue up here in North County? It's not going to be a small
issue. The city should monitor the feasibility of developing conversion technology recycling and composting programs If you, we've already implemented many of the programs. I think as Supervisor Farr pointed out we're taking less waste today than we did six years ago and we've implemented a lot of programs. We did the recycling park which is where we actually divert waste when it comes to our gate and that has had a significant reduction in our waste stream It's something we're always watching. I mean, if you look at this as a 90-year life, God, we're hoping we don't need to be doing this for 90 years but at this time, we feel this is the most viable way for us to proceed.
So we're requesting that you adopt the resolution approving the addendum to the citing element today. I have to at this time read Letter into the record, this was prepared fairly late last night. In fact I think I saw the final draft at 12.03 in the morning and I was requested to read this into the record. Honorable Chair Gray and members of the Board, I am writing on behalf of the City of Santa Maria regarding your board's consideration of an amendment to the countywide siding element of the Integrated Waste Management Plan to include the Santa Maria Integrated Waste Management Facility at Los Flores Ranch. The facility in the siding element. The City appreciates the Board's consideration of this request as authorized in the Integrated Waste Management Act, which request has already received the approval of a majority of the cities with a majority of their population in the county pursuant to the requirements of Public Resources Code sections 4172.1.5 and 50001 In our judgment, the facility meets and exceeds the requirements of the Integrated Waste Management Act for inclusion in the siting element.
The facility was designed to fulfill the intent of the county siting element and provide for in excess of the 15 years of capacity for both the Santa Maria Valley and Taheqa's waste sheds. The continued ability of the county to ensure a minimum 15 years of assured disposal capacity is one of the key components of the siting element as provided in the act. In addition, the current recycling and resource recovery programs in place at the existing Santa Maria landfill would continue to assist the county in meeting our shared obligation to maintain diversion rates as required by the Act. The facility will incorporate all existing diversion programs currently in place and new programs being developed. We'll enhance and not impair the ability of the county to meet the diversion mandates of the Act.
As you may know, the city prepared a comprehensive environmental impact report for the facility in accordance with the requirements of the California Environmental Quality Act. The county commented on the draft EIR in a letter dated April 3rd, 2009. The county's comments responded to and where appropriate changes were made to the final EIR. The EIR identified, studied and mitigated potentially significant impacts resulting from the implementation of the facility project prior to the full extent required by the law. The final EIR was certified as adequate Compliance with CEQA by the Santa Maria City Council on April 20, 2010. No legal challenges were filed challenging the certification of the EIR and the city's approval of the facility project.
A digital copy of the final EIR is attached and will be provided. The terminations of the EIR are therefore binding and conclusively presumed valid pursuant to CEQA public resource code The City has, in good faith, devoted substantial time and resources to the development of the facility in anticipation of a smooth transition from the existing city solid waste facility to use of the new facility.
It is the city's belief and position based on a comprehensive review of the legal requirements in the Act for Amendment of this siting element, and the facility fulfills the necessary requirements for inclusion in this siting element. As noted above, including the proposed amendment has already been approved by majority of the cities with a majority of the county's population. Your Honorable Board's approval of the proposed amendment is respectfully requested under Public Resource Code 41721.5 Parenthesis C.
In quotes, no county shall disapprove a proposed amendment unless it determines based on substantial evidence in the record that the amendment would cause one or more significant adverse impact within its boundaries from the proposed project. Thank you for consideration of these matters and signed by me.
Madam Chair?
Supervisor Carbajal.
Thank you for reading your lawyer's letter. Now I want your lawyer and your consultant to answer the question I asked earlier. If and when or should you want to bring in solid waste from out of the area, will you be doing an addendum to the EIR?
1:26 – 1:3524 turns
I think that's probably... My question, but I think that as your council noted it would depend on the resulting impacts and how that works. For instance if Napomo decides that they're going to haul 2,000 pounds or 2,00 tons of waste in each year is that a significant impact compared to what was analyzed before to create an addendum to the EIR? I don't think so. I mean, there could be different opinions on that.
I think it would depend on what degree that is. It's certainly not the city's intention to go shop outside agencies to dispose of solid waste at our landfill. It is not our intention to do that. That has not been something we ever envisioned doing. Quite frankly if Santa Barbara doesn't Come to our facility. We're not going to build out the whole facility there's two distinct areas There's an upper canyon and a lower Canyon if Santa Barbara doesn't come here because you try Choose alternate means as you're working on now, then we just wouldn't develop the second Canyon it Remember there's two competing Resources being used there. There is a recreational resource And a solid waste resource.
So what's used up by solid waste resource doesn't get used, eventually will get converted to recreation resources but while it's active it will not be used by recreation resource so it's not going to make our council very happy to say I'm taking waste from Phoenix and now the horse people can't use this area. So there is a competing element there
Thank you. Well, that would be of great concern to me and I just wanted to put that down on the record. I do hope we continue to look and have a dance of host fees. I know there's a court case right now that's being adjudicated before the state Supreme Court and actually the Ninth Circuit. And I'm hoping that will provide clarity on that issue. And again if you deviate from the project, I sure hope Proactively continue to engage in that discussion versus having to get into litigation and what have you on on what we feel. We also deserve in terms of impact fees and what have you as host fees,
I certainly understand that. And as usual when we have something that I think we've shown an effort to work with the county to make sure that we help when we have an issue like that.
Thank you, Supervisor. Supervisor Wolf?
Thank you. Mr. Brightman in his letter said that the city did not discuss the issue of annexation and The response from the city is that the proposed IWMF includes annexation of the project site into city jurisdiction. And then it goes on to say prior to annexation of the project site, intergovernmental immunity would apply and project site would not be subject to county regulations.
So that's the response from the city to Mr. Braitman. Mr. Braitman had earlier, because you had the term intergovernmental immunity had been used before he said he had never heard of that term and it is a concern I don't...I'm going to ask our County Council about the term intergovernmental immunity and the statement that it would not be subject that the project site would not be subject to county regulations
I think that's an accurate statement based on the lawyer case that we, um, I believe is cited in some of these materials. I don't know if he cited it there but our state courts have ruled that when you have a city owned land in the county That they are not subject to our zoning and planning regulations, and vice versa. If the county owned a piece of property within a city, the same thing applies so that is a valid
term. So the issue that Supervisor Carpajal brought up about modifying the EIR we would then have no jurisdiction or compel them to do that?
Well, it's really a different issue. Anyone can comment or challenge in EIR a citizen, a public entity. And that has nothing to do with the intergovernmental immunity. That only applies to can we impose zoning regulations on them? Do we issue a conditional use permit? For those questions it's no but we have all the rights just like any other citizen to comment or challenge an EIR. And if they change the project significantly, we will have standing to challenge that if that happens.
Okay and then my other question regarding annexation is this you know the county has been told on occasions as it relates to UCSB or other agencies that we lose tax revenue When we when we transfer property either to a university or other municipality and so it appears as if If we go you're going to move forward with an annexation proposal, and I'm trying to understand the timing of that That that proposal When does the county work on a tax exchange agreement?
If we approve this sighting this addendum Does that? necessarily tie us into annexation. How does everything fit together? Because I'm not sure what comes first here, the chicken or the egg and if you can help me
out.
Approval of this siting element amendment is the egg it would come first because there's a deadline even though the 90-day deadline does not expressly apply to counties for some reason the statute Expressly applies the 90 days to cities. It's silent for the county. Does
this tie us into an annexation agreement?
No,
it does not. So we could approve this and then deny annexation theoretically?
That's a separate issue. Different considerations. How could they annex if it's not contiguous? Well there's a limit on annexing non-contiguous parcels so you'd look at the bigger picture In order to consider that. It has a completely different. So
there are the answer to my interrupted question I'm sorry so that's what it is. There are times that you can annex. Places to cities where they aren't contiguous.
Yes, to a limited
degree. 300 acres to serve municipal uses I think is what it is. Okay
thank
you. And that's a maximum of 300 use acres for the entity.
Thank you. Supervisor? I'm done thank you. We have some public folks that would like to comment so why don't we ask them to come up and tell us what they have to say. Mr. Allen?
Our first request is from Jose Valadez Looks like he's not
here. Did you folks not get your request to speak in? You want to give them to us? Whoops. Well it's a good thing he wasn't on the basketball team, huh? Yeah, geez. Oh man what are we going to do with our one and
only athlete in the entire county? Okay, we'll start with Lillian Smith to be followed by Jennifer Weston-Larson.
1:35 – 1:4518 turns
They didn't have girl sports when I went to school, I'm an oldie. I would've had to ride a horse. Hi Lilian.
Thank you. Madam Chair, members of the board on the evening of April 20th 2010 before the Santa Maria City Council when they approved this project there was a question about the 617.4 acre project And at that time, 17.4 acres was removed and the reason for that was the response to Mr. Brayton's letter about annexation and he provided, it's actually attached In the agency responses in the draft EIR. And it was a quoting of the government code 56742, which contains the text for non-contiguous property annexation. So as was mentioned previously there is a mention of 300 acres but The text is extremely difficult to understand, so I called the State Planning and Research for some clarification but that wasn't forthcoming. And then an earlier question from your board member was about whether or not you had received The staff report responses to the draft EIR.
And I don't know if I really understood that completely, but I did write a five-page letter on impacts of biological resources and it had an addendum to it. Not knowing where to put it, I actually faxed it to the Board of Supervisors It did end up in the hands of Long Range Planning and I got an email saying that they had received it. I know that subsequently, I received all of these staff responses to the draft EIR One of the deputy directors for long-range planning added to my items by addressing the loss of native grassland, which the county protects under certain elements in our thresholds and guidelines manual. So I just wanted to suggest that there needs to be a reading of Mr. Braitman's government code that is provided in the draft EIR And to look to the fact that it does outline 300 acres, and we have 617.4 acres which apparently we no longer have.
So thank you.
Thank you Ms. Smith. Thank you for being with us today. Our
next speaker is Jennifer Weston-Larsen to be followed by Andy Caldwell who's our final speaker.
There's no one from Santa Barbara? I thought I heard the fax machine, that's why I asked.
Thank you. The Orchid Area Advisory Group has serious concerns regarding the disposal of NHIS waste at the Las Flores landfill, and I would say after everything I've heard today they would have even more serious concerns about a number of issues. Anyway, I'd like to go back When Santa Maria had an initial draft EIR presentation and asked what components attendees were interested in including In that analysis and a number of our good area advisory group members as well as other attendees had requested that the EIR contain.
A new impact analysis of that NHIS in any other possible hazardous waste disposal That was after we were informed that the NHIS would continue at the Los Flores landfill. And Santa Maria staff advised that this particular EIR would not contain an analysis of the NHIS because that had already been done for their Santa Maria landfill, Most of the attendees did not agree with this decision.
There was, I know at least two or three people that presented some very compelling evidence regarding The Guadalupe Dunes NHIS, you know very technical detailed information and other things regarding how this decision was made by various agencies and that the standards were actually reduced to allow this center to take it and so forth. So that's been a concern all along. Now I have to say that, I recall at that session again and guessing this was in 2008 possibly 2007 that we had signed you know a lot of people attending and interested in receiving future information on the EIR process And I think we may even been asked to include our address and or emails addresses.
I never received any further information from the city and I didn't hear of anybody else that it tended to did. I also wonder if the City of Santa Maria Post public notices in the local newspaper on a lot of these. I've rarely seen notices from the city of Santa Maria. Thank you for your comments. Unlike what I see, the county routinely has public hearing notices and so forth in the newspapers.
We'll see if someone from Santa Maria can
give me that. And I think that's worrisome. You know, I think if you're going to have
Well, what I'm trying to tell you is your time is up.
Okay. Can we just say one or two other things?
No. I didn't know
we were on this
three-minute timescale. Ma'am, your time is up. Thank you. The next speaker will be Mr. Caldwell.
Yeah, Mr. Caldwell and we do have one speaker instead of Barbara Judith Everett.
Thank you ma'am.
Madam Chair, members of the board. I'm Andy Caldwell representing CoLab. I think that I'd like to put this into several pieces of context. First of all the current Santa Maria landfills on the Santa Maria River we want it out of there so people are happy about this that's why you have an empty room They want the landfill moved. Secondly, the South County Landfill as you know is in the coastal area so there's a part of us that thinks that this is superior to what you guys are doing down there as well because you are still burying waste and you're going to have to keep burying waste and so this is a better deal for both Santa Maria and Tijuguas as far as it goes As technology emerges, we had some people propose 15 to 20 years ago to do a waste conversion thing here at private sector.
South County's thinking of it as the technology emerges people will move to that and I don't think you need to worry about it. Frankly speaking this is somewhat of a late hit this hearing because the county did respond. You may not like it That the board didn't have a hearing, but the County of Santa Barbara is on the record. The County of Santa Barbara did respond and weigh in.
So you can't pretend that you didn't get a chance because you represent the county, the county's on the record. And I think that whether you like it or not, you've got to accept that. Secondly, you got two county supervisors on an oversight committee. They did hear it. The last item I want to bring up is kind of touchy, but where's the waste? Where's the quote-unquote oil waste in Los Flores right now.
It's in the ground. The bottom line there is no incentive for oil companies to dig this stuff up So they just leave it there. It's unlined, is just in the ground. If they do move it out of those subs and put it in this, it's going to be an aligned area that too is an improvement. So I think that there's no arguments here that this is going to create a significant environmental impact or an additional one that wasn't analyzed Comparing the fact that it's better than what you got at Tejiguas, it's better than what we have at the Santa Maria River. And with respect to the hazardous waste or the non-hazardous waste depending on how you want to view it in the ground and lost forest if he gets moved into the landfill that is too is going to be an improvement This is a Santa Maria issue.
It's between, in our opinion it's between the City of Santa Maria, the Regional Water Quality Control Board and the 4th and 5th District Supervisors.
Thank you Mr. Caldwell. One more speaker?
Our final speaker is in Santa Barbara, Judith Everett.
1:45 – 1:524 turns
Yes, Madam Chair and Supervisors. I'm here to talk in opposition to the reducing any funds needed for mental health and alcoholism in this area. I think it is very short-sighted to be reducing these funds because It will cost the emergency treatment more and it will deprive other people of their needs. So that's one point, and that's the economics but also connected to the economics it's time that local governments said to the federal government We need the money that you are wasting on war, on the military research and development and on fighting overseas when it's not needed. So we have to stop being insane on this issue and to help people who are very much in need. Now I'm a psychologist trained in Western Australia, and I've had a lot of experience in this area.
I've lived here 40 years, and I've seen a lot of good things that are done by the mental health department and by other volunteer arrangements, so that I implore you not to reduce these funds. And so thank you for your time. Bye. Thank you for
your time. Do we have any more questions? Supervisor Farr, you said you had some.
Actually, I just had some comments that I wanted to make. First of all, the questions that I asked were all kind of aimed at trying to get answers to what I think are some fundamental questions. What are you planning to take? How much are you planning to take? How quickly are you planning to take it, because I think that that immediately affects the lifespan that's projected for it.
And then where are you planning to take it from? And obviously the siting of any landfill has enormous impacts of all kinds which we haven't even talked about today but they're going to vary in intensity depending on the answers to these questions And that's also then a way to decide whether there are any significant impacts here that weren't necessarily identified when the EIR was certified.
I want to be very clear, and I'm going to speak to the mayor who I have the greatest respect for in the community of Santa Maria that he represents. I am very interested in providing an additional landfill for the city of Santa Maria despite all of the impacts. I'm very interested in providing a backup landfill space for Tahigas that really supports the rest of the county that uses that. And I'm also interested in providing a location for these hazardous soils that come out of oil operations in our county, because I feel really strongly that everybody should clean up their own mess.
And so I'm very concerned about providing a landfill that provides for the needs of our county in all ways and in all areas. But what I'm not interested in doing is providing another landfill space for communities outside Santa Barbara County, and particularly when it comes to anything that has any even residual contamination in it. So that's the core issue for me, Mayor Lavagnino.
And so that's the issue that I have here. I want to be supportive of us, I don't want to be supportive of stuff outside and with all due respect for you know Mr. Sweet here, I think that the financial implications are probably not something that I would really look at because it may not be financially beneficial now to do this but it could be in the future and so all I can do is go on what's in the EIR in front of me And assume that if the numbers are there in the future, that they could be utilized in the future. That we could be looking at 500 more truck trips for this soil coming through both North and South County. And I think when it comes to that issue then I think the two areas that I think are significant but I don't have enough information on to make a decision today One is traffic and circulation because we heard that the area that was studied did not expand out of the immediate Santa Maria area, which if we're going to look at these truck trip numbers obviously you're going to have an impact on a greater area in the county.
And the other has to do with hazardous materials as far as those soils are concerned and the transportation of that, and then the risk of upset. So those are the two areas that I think that we need some more information on to make sure that they aren't significant. And again, you know, I want to be supportive but I think that we still have a lot of unanswered questions here. Thank you Madam Chair. Supervisor Lovanino?
Thank you Madam Chair. You know when I was reading over this, I was kind of curious why we were having the meeting today but and I thought it was going to be relatively short. But I'm glad Supervisor Farr brought up a lot of questions that needed to be answered. And I think one of them is that we address that we do have somewhat of an in-house problem that has already been addressed as far as EIR comments are concerned.
But when you look at this, I don't think the city has changed anything that what they've done since we answered, we made our response on the EIR. As far as non-hazardous impacted soils go, For me living up in Santa Maria, this is something we've dealt with for years. It's not... We're not taking CoLab's word that it's non-hazardous. We're not taking the Santa Barbara County Taxpayers Association. We're not taking Committee Inc., we're taking Regional Water Quality Control Board.
I understand that you know, we always are going to have Questions that need to be answered. I think that we had our chance at the bite of the apple We may have dropped the ball, but I don't think that we've raised a level of substantial evidence that what would need That would make us want to go back and take a second look at this I'd like to make a motion that we adopt take the Staff recommendation that we adopt the attached resolution and approve the proposed addendum
1:52 – 2:0015 turns
Any other comments? Supervisor, I would firmly second that and say to each and every one of us that we simply have got to get the disposal site out of the Santa Maria River. Now immediately it's I haven't been able to believe that we've been doing that for all these years. So I'll second the motion and I think we'll go ahead and vote on it and see where we go from here. Supervisor Carbajal.
Thank you, Madam Chair. You know I have the same concerns as Supervisor Farr. I think she hits the issues right on the nail on the head but I also feel that we're somewhat limited as to what we can do. I've expressed my concerns which are pretty much aligned with Supervisor Farr's concerns I don't want this to be a landfill. It's in our county for out of county trash, I just don't.
And if we ever have a discussion about that, I'm looking at the EIR being amended and I'm looking at us continuing to have really substantive discussions on what does that mean? And to what extent? So, but I also think that there's the county has participated. I'm disappointed that I think we didn't We weren't given an opportunity to as a board to perhaps provide more substantive comment and really consider the complexity of this But in light of what council has said in our limited position, I am inclined to be supportive
Thank you. Supervisor Wolk?
Thank you. You know, I don't think I've ever done this before or maybe I have once but I'm going to have to abstain on this particular issue because of all the comments that have been made. You know, words have been used like we dropped the ball. I know we did not get this information. There's been some conflicting information about what happened at our own board representative and staff level.
The Santa Maria River, this is the first I've heard of that and I certainly am not discounting that it sounds like it's a huge issue But it's never it's never been discussed. I would have liked some more information on that so I could have made a more reasoned Decision and Of course the issues that have been brought up by Supervisor far where the traffic circulation outside of Santa Barbara County? I think I think that would give us reason to continue the item, to continue other significant impacts.
But anyway, that's how I'm going to vote. Mr.
Aloha? Madam Chair, just one last question. The Multi-Jurisdiction Solid Waste Task Force in 2004, could you tell me what somebody mentioned earlier that that's when it was adopted, the siting of this particular landfill. Could somebody just touch on that again for me because I think that's somewhat of a critical
Chair Greg, members of the board. Multi-Jurisdictional Solid Waste Task Group started in 2002 I believe. It was initiated by the City of Santa Barbara and the County initially and then expanded to the rest of the cities. It was to talk about discuss solid waste issues that were going on throughout the county as an informational group not as a decision making body. Out of that we developed long range plans We developed those long-range plans based on waste sheds. Santa Maria basically dealt with the north part of the county, Taheqa, Santa Barbara was the south part of the county and then Lompoc took care of the Lompoc Valley and we identified lots of programs some of which have been implemented. We identified two major facilities which you heard about today one was the new landfill for the North County in Santa Maria and the other was the conversion technology project that I've been working on we've been working on In 04 when that plan, all of those plans and programs came together we shared that, provided that to all of the jurisdictions within the county.
All the cities heard it on their agenda. I believe it was a hearing at the time. The Board of Supervisors heard it as a hearing as well and basically adopted received and filed that report. acknowledge what was in that plan and that we were going to move, that staffs were going to move forward on those issues.
Thank you. That's helpful. And again I just go back to sort of the vision that all the jurisdictions were trying to put together and like I said I wish we had more of a hook to basically deal with a lot more of the issues like I said I think Supervisor Farr raises all the issues that I'm concerned about but it doesn't seem There doesn't seem to be another vehicle. So I just want to make sure that the city of Santa Maria continues to work with us. in good faith on all the other collateral issues that I think are of major concern and of interest to Santa Barbara County.
And, you know, I also see this as an unfortunate guarantee for our predicament in the South Coast. And as much as I, you know, this is the only landfill in the past 25 years that will have been permitted in the state of California. And so should something happen in the South Coast, I want us to be able to have preference. I want us to be able to have preference in rates.
All those issues are important to us and that's the context in which I'm willing to accept the predicament we're in but it's not without Pressing hard for telling you what's important to us is the county of Santa Barbara, at least myself.
Supervisor I want to comment on that which I don't usually do but if I were still on the Board of Supervisors at the time that Santa Barbara needed to bring their trash here And you know I'm an avid North County person. I would be right with you, because I'm also a county supervisor and it is in the best interest of the County of Santa Barbara to get Tahequa's closed, to make it a coastal area, to get our...and I can't imagine any North County person thinking much differently than that so if that'll help you, I want to say that to you.
Let's vote.
Mr. Harbaugh, Ms. Wiltz?
I'm changing my vote to a no vote because at the very beginning of this hearing I am thinking about this. I did ask about how do we come up with this possible significant adverse impacts and I think Supervisor Farr has given me the answer to that so I think that it would be reasonable to continue the item to August 2nd to get those questions answered so I'm going to be voting no
Ms. Farr? No. Mr. Lavinino? Yes. Ms. Gray?
Aye.
Passes 3-2.
Thank you all, thank you everyone. Madam
Chair, I still would like the information that Supervisor Farr requested to be brought to her and the rest of the board if that's okay. I'd appreciate that.
2:00 – 2:024 turns
Rick, when can you get it to her? Where did Rick go? Did he leave? Oh wow! I'd appreciate it.
Would you give us a timeline more or less to shoot for?
Like August 2nd. August 2, Supervisor. Thank you. Mayor I need to ask you something. We're adjourning to closed session.
Thank you. Yeah.