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The C&D waste minimization plan for the City of Hawthorne was part of
the city’s response to complying with the 50 percent waste diversion
goals of the IWMA.
The City of Hawthorne recognized that this plan needed to build on
decisions that had been made (for example, the structure of the existing
franchise and city ordinances) and existing operations in the area.
Also, there were limitations on the amount of construction and
demolition data that could be obtained in the time allotted. This was
particularly true because of the lack of quantitative reporting on local
disposal and recycling activities in the past.
The city’s consultants first obtained as much information as possible
from the city and the city’s franchised hauler, H&C Disposal. The city
also sought the perspective of other businesses in the city, including
waste haulers, recyclers, contractors, waste generators, and developers.
The city’s consultants contacted city departments to identify some
businesses that may be impacted by the new franchise. The consultants
made a presentation at the local Kiwanis club to solicit additional
input. The city prepared a flyer about the franchise requirements for
distribution by city building and planning departments and sought input
from many other contacts in the area.
The City of Hawthorne updated the Los Angeles C&D recycling directory
for use by H&C and city contractors and worked to evaluate any
particular constraints about operating within the City of Hawthorne,
given the city ordinance and exclusive franchise. The city also
contacted many other cities in the Los Angeles region to update
information on their policies, practices, and rates and fees. Based on
other successful programs, the city confirmed the best practices for C&D
recycling, reporting, and monitoring.
The city also reviewed city documents related to the terms of the city’s
solid waste franchise and contract agreement. Municipal code language
related to solid waste and recycling activities permitted in the city
was also reviewed, as well as current reporting practices and
requirements for H&C and other haulers and recyclers.
The terms of the franchise agreement with H&C and the municipal code
limit the city’s ability to require H&C to provide information on
existing solid waste costs, tonnages landfilled, and tonnages and types
of material recycled. However, H&C cooperated by providing information
about their operations and by meeting with the city.
The City of Hawthorne tried to identify the amount of C&D activity in
Hawthorne over the past year. Unfortunately, there was insufficient data
available in Hawthorne to properly determine how much material was
collected, diverted, and disposed of over the past several years.
After local research was completed, the city evaluated C&D programs
based on their practicality, cost effectiveness, and potential diversion
impacts. The City of Hawthorne was particularly concerned with the cost
impacts of recommendations, both short-term and long-term. The city also
wanted to protect itself against likely major cost increases from
projected disposal cost increases.
Since the primary impetus for the development of the C&D plan was
compliance with the 50 percent diversion mandate, there was an
overriding need to maximize waste diversion and meet State reporting
requirements. By building a sustainable infrastructure for policies,
programs, and reporting on C&D debris recycling, the city was able to
understand and control future costs. Throughout the plan, the City of
Hawthorne adopted incremental steps to be taken to accomplish individual
tasks to reach the desired objectives.
The city chose to award an exclusive right to collect and dispose of
C&D debris to its franchised hauler, H&C Disposal. The city directed H&C
to implement recycling programs for C&D debris they exclusively collect,
and to report to the city the amounts of C&D materials recycled and
disposed.
H&C had been the franchised hauler for residential and commercial wastes
in Hawthorne for more than 40 years. On May 24, 1999, the City of
Hawthorne approved an amendment to the agreement for refuse collection
services between the city and H&C to provide H&C an exclusive right to
collect, transport, and dispose of the following materials in Hawthorne:
- Construction and demolition debris.
- Discarded appliances and furniture and other similar goods.
Not included in this exclusive authority are the following
exceptions:
- C&D debris hauled by contractors in their own or leased vehicles
from their own job sites when the hauling is an incidental rather than
a primary part of the contractor’s services.
- Carpeting, furniture, appliances, white goods, or similar goods
hauled by persons or entities delivering new goods, when the hauling
is an incidental part of the delivery of new goods.
- Scrap lumber incidentally included in yard waste hauled by
gardeners or landscapers, when the hauling is an incidental part of
the gardening or landscaping services.
- Recyclable materials sold or donated to someone other than H&C
Disposal, if the materials have been separated at the source and the
hauler was not paid by the waste generator for collecting, processing,
or transporting those materials, or a consulting fee for recycling
services.
- Appliances and white goods hauled by utility companies as part of
a rebate or buyback program.
- C&D debris generated by any public project of the City of
Hawthorne.
- Materials excepted by the city manager due to special
circumstances.
H&C agreed to pay the city a 10 percent billing fee and a 15 percent
franchise fee for all C&D wastes collected.
The city council determined in its adoption of the exclusive franchise
for C&D debris for H&C disposal, that:
“CONTRACTOR represents and warrants to City that it has the experience
and qualifications to conduct recycling programs for the recovery of
recyclables from construction and demolition debris, discarded
appliances, discarded furniture and other similar goods, to provide City
with information sufficient to meet the City’s reporting requirements
under AB939 [the IWMA], to arrange to collect, transport and recycle or
dispose of these materials in a safe manner which will minimize the
adverse effects of collection vehicles on air quality and traffic.”
Based on these determinations, the C&D plan noted that it was incumbent
upon H&C to detail its plans to provide C&D recycling services to the
satisfaction of the city in a comprehensive C&D operations plan (see
below).
The IWMA requires the City of Hawthorne to develop a diversion
requirement and reporting system to document the amount of construction
and demolition waste diverted from landfills, along with the total
amount disposed. The reporting systems outlined for C&D waste are
critically important for the city to more accurately project the need
for C&D services in the future. The report data also serves as a guide
to set rates that are fair to both ratepayers and the franchised hauler
and to provide incentives for recycling services. These can be evaluated
on an ongoing basis by city staff.
City staff recommended a council resolution that established a policy to
require the reuse, recycling, and/or composting of C&D waste and the
documentation of C&D waste recycling by all the key participants in
Hawthorne.
The resolution adopted by the city council on September 13, 1999:
- Required all city departments and H&C Disposal to implement a
construction and demolition debris recycling program.
- Required the city manager to complete and begin to implement a
comprehensive C&D waste minimization plan by October 1, 1999, that
details activities by city departments, H&C Disposal, and all private
sector C&D projects in Hawthorne to increase the reuse, recycling, and
composting of C&D materials.
- Required the chief of general services and public works to include
a specification for construction and demolition waste management in
contract documents for all public works construction, including:
- Guidelines and requirements for reuse, recycling, and/or
composting of C&D materials from city construction and demolition
projects.
- Submittal of a C&D waste management plan and quantitative reports
for C&D materials generated by all contractors for City of Hawthorne
construction and demolition projects as a condition of approval of
progress payments to be paid by the city.
- Required all private construction or demolition projects over
10,000 square feet in gross floor area to divert the maximum feasible
amount of construction and demolition materials.
- Required all private developers, construction and demolition
contractors, waste haulers, and others handling these materials to
report the quantities diverted and disposed to the city upon
completion of the project in a format approved by the city, either
directly or through H&C Disposal.
- Established detailed measures for monitoring and enforcing the
reporting requirement on private construction, demolition, or land
clearing projects over 10,000 square feet in gross floor area by:
- Requiring submittal of quantitative reports for C&D materials
generated as a condition of issuance of building or demolition
permits.
- Requiring a $250 deposit with building permit fees from private
contractors when they obtain building or demolition permits. The
deposit is to be returned at project completion if contractors
demonstrate that they have supplied the C&D reports.
- Requiring that satisfactorily completed C&D reports are received
by the city before issuance of a certificate of occupancy for new
construction projects.
- Required H&C to submit quarterly reports to the city on the amount
of C&D materials collected by material type, the destination to which
each of those materials were taken, and the amount of diversion
documented to have been achieved at each of those facilities.
The C&D plan was adopted by the city manager on October 1, 1999, as
directed by the city council. The City of Hawthorne found that there
were many opportunities to increase C&D diversion in Hawthorne. Key
findings included:
- Construction and demolition contractors in Hawthorne are already
recycling some C&D materials, particularly inert material and metal,
but those activities have not been well documented. Similarly,
salvaging of reusable material and selected recyclables is also taking
place, although harder to quantify. A considerable amount of inert
material is crushed and processed on site for use in the construction
process, and this activity has also not been documented. Reporting
requirements can capture this information.
- Many contractors already meet the definition of “self-haul” and
will continue to haul their own material. Reporting requirements for
all public and private projects can capture this information.
- A large amount of recyclables from C&D debris in Hawthorne is
still going to disposal facilities. The city believes that contractors
and haulers in Hawthorne can still recycle far more C&D material with
minimal impacts on costs or operating efficiencies. These could be
stimulated through price incentives, city policies and requirements,
additional hauling service options, technical assistance to
contractors, and H&C subcontracting or joint venturing with recyclers.
- City staff is already implementing many recycling practices
through their day-to-day functions, including imposing recycling and
recycled-content requirements in contracts. However, these practices
are not widely recognized. A more formal monitoring system and better
reporting would help to document these activities.
- City staff is in a position to help educate contractors about
service options through the distribution of literature at their
service desks. The staff can also collect data by requiring reporting
with permit and EIR requirements and by implementing clear enforcement
of these requirements (for example, withholding signoff or deposits).
- H&C appears open to many different strategies that would allow
them to use recycling facilities that are competitive in price with
their current transfer station tip fees. Nearly all C&D rolloff
materials are delivered at transfer stations at this time.
- In addition to H&C, approximately 100 independent companies are
currently able to provide reuse, recycling, and composting services in
Hawthorne for any materials donated or sold by waste generators. The
materials must be kept separate for reuse, recycling, or composting.
- The city prepared a construction and demolition debris recycling
directory that provides detailed information on all those companies,
including contact information, types of materials accepted/processed,
specifications that need to be met for materials accepted, services
offered, and end-products made. The Hawthorne directory is adapted
from a directory developed over many years by the City of Los Angeles,
modified for Hawthorne policies and programs.
- Of particular note are the service providers that can accept loads
of mixed C&D materials. While these service providers may vary in
their recycling processes, capacity, diversion rates, specifications,
reporting, and collection services, they offer a starting point to
help H&C supplement source separation practices and achieve high rates
of diversion at prices competitive with current transfer station fees.
- Mixed C&D processing capacity in the region is expected to
continue to increase substantially in the coming 12 to 24 months. At
least one new facility will open before the end of 1999. The State is
currently in the final stages of adopting regulations that will
monitor and oversee these new types of recycling facilities.
Currently, processors of mixed C&D materials are:
- American Waste
Industries, Los Angeles.
- Bradley Landfill and
Recycling Center, Sun Valley, Calif.
- Community Recycling and
Resource Recovery Transfer Station, Sun Valley
- Looney Bins, Sun
Valley, Calif.
- Rates to recycle C&D materials are now competitive with local
transfer station rates. Although there may be a small incremental cost
in some cases to recycle mixed C&D at reuse, recycling, or composting
facilities by H&C when compared to landfilling, that is offset by the
need to comply with State recycling mandates.
- Clear cost savings opportunities (for example, recycling concrete
and scrap metal) combined with incremental cost increases for mixed
C&D disposal should provide an aggregate cost savings to H&C. With the
risk of $10,000 per day fines under the IWMA considered by the city,
it is also clearly in the city’s interest to maximize the amount of
materials diverted from C&D. Recommendations were made in this C&D
plan on how to accomplish that.
- Interviews with contractors, Hawthorne businesses, hauling
companies, and recycling companies showed a very broad range of prices
for disposal and recycling services. There was considerable concern
about costs increasing and less recycling occurring as a result of the
additional city franchise and billing fees required as part of the C&D
franchise. C&D practices vary, with some contractors using H&C and
others self-hauling. Many use other hauling and recycling companies,
and some contractors and businesses using the services of small
companies that combine clean-out services with recycling and hauling.
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