Solano County judge OKs Potrero Hills Landfill's environmental document

Solano County judge OKs Potrero Hills Landfill's environmental document
By Danny Bernardini
Posted: 11/13/2009

After years of court cases and appeals, the environmental document surrounding expansion of Potrero Hills Landfill has been approved.

Now it will be up to the environmental groups who have been challenging the growth on whether to appeal the Nov. 3 decision.

David Tam, with Sustainability, Parks, Recycling And Wildlife Legal Defense Fund, said it was too early to know if and when an appeal would be filed, but said a decision may be made next week.

The latest ruling was handed down by Solano County Superior Court Judge Paul Beeman, who had previously rejected several attempts to approve the environmental documents to expand the Suisun City landfill.

Potrero Hills Landfill accepts waste from several counties throughout the Bay Area and Sacramento, as well as Nevada. Several years ago, plans to expand the landfill were met with resistance. Since then, Waste Connections has purchased the landfill and plans to continue the effort to expand.

Several efforts to stop the expansion have centered around environmental documents that were said to not have not addressed some aspects enough. One of Beeman's denials in the past said the documents didn't properly explore using Hay Road Landfill as an alternative.

The latest effort included Tam's group seeking to dismiss a lawsuit filed by Waste Connections in an effort to have a federal judge eliminate the voter-approved Measure E, which outlaws the importing of waste from other areas, which Solano County has ignored for nearly 25 years.

Beeman addressed that effort in his ruling.

"Furthermore, even if Measure E were to be enforced, it still allows for some waste generated out of county to be brought into Solano County for disposal," Beeman wrote. "While enforcement of Measure E could serve to extend by years the capacity of Potrero Hills, it would not achieve the project objective for a stable, long-term source of disposal capacity for locally-generated waste."