Sonoma County yard waste compost operation in peril

Kevin McCallum, THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
Sonoma County’s beleaguered composting program now looks likely to shut down as legal and environmental challenges facing its operation atop the Central Landfill continue to mount.
If the closure that many now see as inevitable happens, thousands of tons of yard debris will need to be hauled to facilities outside the county, with disposal fees rising sharply to pay for the additional shipping costs.
“We’re going to have out-haul. Clearly that’s the writing on the wall,” Supervisor Shirlee Zane said. “It’s a huge disappointment, because ideally we’d like to be able to contain all of these programs and do this ourselves.”
The Sonoma County Waste Agency, a 10-member joint powers authority made up of nine cities and Sonoma County, has been struggling to contain the fallout of a federal lawsuit alleging that wastewater from the 25-acre composting operation has been polluting Stemple Creek for years.
Rainwater falls on open-air rows of compost, leaches through the piles, and is collected in what is now a 2-million gallon containment pond. During heavy rains, wastewater from the pond has spilled into the landfill’s stormwater collection system, which drains to the creek.
The lawsuit, filed by neighbors of the nearby Happy Acres subdivision, names the county, which owns the landfill, the waste agency, which leases the site, and Sonoma Compost, the private company that for more than 20 years has run the compost operation.
Read more via Sonoma County yard waste compost operation in peril | The Press Democrat.