Construction Waste Recycling Ordered

Diversion of construction waste from the Sonoma County, Calif., county landfill is a key to meeting county recycling goals, according to Ken Wells, Sonoma County Public Works integrated waste manager.

Starting in mid-March, county workers will inspect all incoming loads -- except for packer trucks that collect and compress residential trash -- at the central landfill and transfer stations in Healdsburg, Sonoma, Guerneville, Occidental and Annapolis.

Anyone hauling more than 10 percent of construction and demolition waste (lumber, scrap metal, cardboard and yard debris) will be required to leave and get those recyclables sorted out or pay a 25 percent surcharge to drop it off and let the county handle the sorting.

The surcharge -- boosting dump fees from $52.50 per ton to $65.60 per ton -- will primarily apply to building contractors, Wells said.

Keith Woods, head of the North Coast Builders Exchange, called it another government regulation that boosts the cost of housing.

"I guess doing the right thing comes with a price tag," he said.

All costs "have to be passed on to someone," Woods added.

The dump surcharge will affect smaller builders, while larger companies already recycle construction leftovers, Ron Farino, general superintendent for Christopherson Homes, said.

For years, Christopherson workers have sorted lumber and concrete into separate debris boxes at construction sites. Recycling those two wastes knocks a little off the company's trash disposal bill, which runs up to $20,000 a month, Farino said.

"It makes sense," he said. "We're all for it."

With the new county surcharge, it may become cost-effective to recycle cardboard as well, he said.

Wells said surcharge fees and other revenue will cover the $2.8 million-a-year cost of the program, which is expected to divert 65 tons of waste per day from the landfills by year's end.

And because the surcharge was deliberately set high, he said, a private company is stepping into the construction waste sorting and recycling business.

Industrial Carting plans to open the county's first privately operated construction waste recycling facility at its site in June, company spokesman Ernie Carpenter said.

For about $50 a ton, the facility will take construction debris off contractors' hands, sort it and recycle about 80 percent.

"We think that will make us very viable," Carpenter said.

Pavitra Crimmel, a deconstruction contractor, said the county program is "brilliantly simple," giving builders an economic incentive to recycle. "It's always about money," Crimmel said.

The county dump surcharge also may boost her business, which is labor-intensive deconstruction and recycling of buildings. It's cheaper, in most cases, to demolish buildings with a bulldozer and haul the unsorted remains to the dump, but the surcharge may tip the economic scale in her favor.

"We're diehard recyclers," said Crimmel, an owner of Beyond Waste in Cotati.

If the county program works, in three years no one will bring unsorted construction or demolition waste to the landfill.