Orange County Register

It’s been about 11 years since the county decided to open up its landfills as a dumping ground for other counties’ trash to raise cash to help repay the bankruptcy debt.

And ever since, OC refuse has had to share its real estate with garbage from Los Angeles, San Diego, San Bernardino and Riverside counties, sometimes causing a stink among residents about the speed at which our landfills were expanding.

It wasn’t until Tuesday that the county approved an agreement to build a waste and recycling center at its south county dump so that construction waste from self-haulers can be recycled.

This year, self-hauled trash made up nearly 22 percent of the 545,662 tons of garbage dumped at the Prima Deshecha Landfill. The move should reduce the amount of garbage piling up in south county, although it’s not clear how much.

“What’s being proposed now reflects a need geographically for people who want to bring construction debris,” said OC Waste and Recycling spokeswoman Julie Chay. “It also reflects a need that has emerged since South County has grown.”

County officials had been looking for a place where self-haulers down south could recycle their construction waste since 2006. Before that, a need for this type of recycling facility “wasn’t identified” in south county, Chay said.

Elsewhere in Orange County, construction workers and do-it-yourself residents can take their demolition and construction materials to a number of private recycling facilities. South OC residents have to drive to one of these private sites if they want their materials recycled.

As a result the percentage of self-hauled waste dumped at the county’s other two landfills is much lower: 4.2 percent at Olinda Alpha in Brea and less than one percent at Frank R. Bowerman in Irvine. (The general public can not dump waste at Bowerman, which also could contribute to the low amount of self-haul waste dumped there).

There hasn’t been a similar facility in south county, said integrated waste management director Janice Goss, because land either wasn’t available, or it was overly expensive.

So, on Tuesday, the Board of Sups approved an agreement with CR&R Incorporated to develop a recycling center on the county-owned dump in San Juan Capistrano. CR&R will lease the land, plus they’ll pay a $10,000 penalty if they don’t recycle at least 80 percent of the trash they take in.

The move will not affect how trash hauled in from outside the county will be handled because self-hauled construction waste is already separated before it’s brought here.

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