Environment Report: San Diegans Can Keep Burying Garbage for the Next 37 Years 

January was a trashy month in San Diego.  

A new state law went into effect, requiring everyone recycle their food waste meaning meat, bones, veggie scraps and citrus peels go in a green waste bin at your apartment or behind your restaurant. Cities have to grapple with the cost of that new, mostly unfunded state mandate which usually means passing it on to you, the ratepayer.  

And sanitation workers at Republic Services staged a month-long strike that, as Jesse Marx laid out in his column, the company broke with the help of a contract provision that would have taken health care from the workers if they didn’t resume trash collecting. If San Diegans didn’t think about what they threw away before, they certainly had to face it then as trash generated over a major holiday swelled outside local dumpsters.  

Zero waste advocates, meanwhile, contend that San Diego is particularly good at generating trash. One measure of that is how long we let our landfills grow before closing them.  

One of the region’s major landfills, Otay Landfill owned by Republic Services, is scheduled to close on Feb. 25, 2030, according to the County of San Diego’s Department of Environmental Health. That’s the agency empowered by the state to regulate landfills.  

“When people say, ‘when is the landfill going to close?’ I always ask them, ‘how much are you going to throw away?’” Neil Mohr, general manager of San Diego collection for Republic Services, told me during a tour in early December. 

The county has to review all landfill permits once every five years, which generates a new assessment of how much room the landfill has to grow before it hits its permitted capacity limit. According to that, the region has enough space to landfill trash until 2059. The state’s new food waste recycling law is expected to help extend the life of the region’s landfills. The county estimated 39 percent of the trash we throw away as a region is organic food waste and therefore recyclable.  

But landfills can grow past their permit limit. The county report shows Miramar landfill, run by the city of San Diego, will also max-out capacity by 2030. But in 2019 the city announced extended the life of that landfill by allowing waste to pile another 25 feet higher into the air. 

That irks zero waste advocates like Jessica Toth at the Solana Center for Environmental Innovation.  

“I don’t want to see us siting additional capacity (at landfills) because that allows us to keep dumping there,” Toth said. 

The county expects another major landfill, Sycamore Landfill which is also owned by Republic Services, to apply for two more life extensions based on how much waste it received on average. Its estimated closure date is 2054. 

We’ll have a more up-to-date outlook on the region’s waste generation this summer, when the county’s next five-year waste management report is due to the state. 

In Other News

• New government wildfire maps could trigger stricter building codes to reduce risk, but building industry advocates worry this could make it harder for the region to meet housing goals. (inewsource) 
• Loved this Union Tribune story reporting on the disparate wait times to clean roadkill from the street. (It’s called a shovel and a bucket, homies.) 
• San Diego officials want to close dozens of coastal parks and parking areas at night to cut down on reports of crime, late-night parties and illegal parties. (Union-Tribune) 
• This sea lion that wandered onto a San Diego freeway was a repeat offender. (Union-Tribune)  
• A San Diego County judge fined a man $5,000 for illegally fishing in Swami’s State Marine Conservation Area. (California Department of Fish and Wildlife) 
• Port of San Diego is planning to double power capacity at the port via a contract with Baker Electric, Inc. which will provide equipment so more huge cruise ships can use electricity instead of running diesel auxiliary engines while docked. (sdnews.com)  
• A 24-hour air pollution hotline is on the table at San Diego County Air Pollution Control District under a new suite of plans to increase enforcement. (Union Tribune) 
• The Water Tech Alliance is holding a panel Tuesday from 10 a.m. to noon on the region’s desire to address stormwater infrastructure deficits.  
• In the name of trash and wildlife hazard mitigation, Encinitas City Council decided to ban helium balloons. (Union-Tribune)