infoCycling: Winter 2001, continued

Del Norte Solid Waste Management Authority—
Regional agency adopts zero waste plan

Del Norte County, Crescent City, and the unincorporated towns of Smith River, Gasquet, Hiouchi, and Klamath worked together as a joint powers authority (JPA) from 1992 to 1997 to meet Integrated Waste Management Act goals. 

The Board approved the Del Norte Solid Waste Management Authority’s (DNSWMA) request to be treated as a regional agency in August 1997.

The population of the jurisdictions within the DNSWMA is about 28,000, which includes approximately 3,300 prisoners at the Pelican State Prison. There are a combined total of about 1,000 businesses within the DNSWMA.

The DNSWMA adopted the Del Norte Zero Waste Plan on February 15, 2000. The fact that the only landfill in Del Norte County will be closing within three years played an important role in the decision to adopt a zero waste plan. DNSWMA expects disposal fees to nearly double as waste is exported to other disposal facilities.

To keep disposal costs low and to comply with the elements of the Del Norte Countywide Integrated Waste Management Plan, the DNSWMA intends to increase the reuse, recycling, and composting programs outlined in its zero waste plan.

Programs will be implemented based on:

• Need to have a particular diversion program in place immediately. (For example, there is an immediate need for a diversion program targeting sewage sludge because this material is difficult to manage and will continue to be generated after Del Norte County’s only landfill closes.)
• Ease and cost of implementing a diversion program.
• Potential percentage of the disposed waste stream that could be recovered by implementing a diversion program.

DNSWMA’s diversion efforts should be noted. The Jurisdiction Waste Diversion Program and Diversion Rate Summary Web page from the Board's Local Government Central Web site lists DNSWMA’s current waste diversion programs.  This page gives a picture of DNSWMA’s efforts in implementing successful diversion programs.Diversion programs can have an impact on residential disposal tons.  

For instance, one chart depicting DNSWMA 1998 disposal (Reporting Year [RY] per Capita Residential Disposal of Jurisdictions with Similar Population—DNSWMA [1998]) shows DNSWMA has the lowest per-resident disposal of all jurisdictions with a similar population size.

In addition, the Del Norte Zero Waste Plan addresses the needs of businesses and nonprofit organizations that want to create or expand businesses for recovering, processing, reselling, and manufacturing materials.

This plan includes establishing partnerships to set up a commercial/industrial "resource recovery park." The park will function as an “incubator” for businesses (a facility in which fledgling businesses share resources such as loading docks, equipment, and office space). The resource recovery park will add value to discards by serving as a community drop-off center for reusable items and a retail outlet for reused, repaired, refurbished, and recycled products.

"The Del Norte Zero Waste Plan will also be used as a touchstone guidance document for future updates and revisions of the Del Norte Countywide Integrated Waste Management Plan," states Tedd Ward, an analyst and planner with the DNSWMA.

Because DNSWMA recognizes that food waste makes up a large part of its disposed waste streams (see the partial Web pages from the Board's Solid Waste Characterization
Database below), food waste has been included in the Del Norte Zero Waste Plan as a planned food/paper composting program.

DNSWMA will be implementing the majority of the food waste programs outlined in its zero waste plan after the resource recovery park has been developed. 

Food waste programs include:

• Educating residents on backyard composting and promoting backyard composting programs.
• Expanding the existing workshops for backyard composting at the community garden.
• Establishing drop-off sites for residential compostables.
• Establishing a drop-off site for self-haul organics and food contaminated materials.
• Establishing a system for franchise hauler organics collection.
• Establishing a pilot program with restaurants and other institutional kitchens for on-site composting.
• Establishing a centralized community composting facility for food and paper composting.

DNSWMA food waste programs currently include two food banks and monthly community composting workshops. 

"As a rural county which has achieved a 45 percent diversion rate in 1999, our zero waste plan provides a detailed guide for our future activities. This plan simply directs us down a path toward local self-sufficiency by reducing our reliance on out-of-county landfills," explains Kevin Hendrick, director of the Del Norte Solid Waste Management Authority.

For additional information on the Del Norte Zero Waste Plan, contact Tedd Ward with the Del Norte Solid Waste Management Authority at (707) 465-1100 or at recycle@cc.northcoast.com. 

You can find information about the Del Norte Zero Waste Plan on the Web, at www.grrn.org/. 

You may also contact the Board's Local assistance staff at (916) 341-6199 . 

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Contents: infoCycling Winter 2001

Last updated: December 28, 2007