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Politics & Government

Healdsburg Tempers Flare Over Sonoma County Wastewater Treatment Feasibility Study

Councilmembers complain that a county plan to study new waste diversion methods was ill-conceived, and question why the county has already hired a consultant to do it.

Healdsburg City Council members had strong objections this week to a  Sonoma County's public works department presentation that promoted a new study on improving methods of waste diversion.

“If you could narrow this down to something we could get our hands on, we could get more unanimity on this thing,” Mayor Tom Chambers said after hearing the report Tuesday from Sonoma County Public Works and Transportation Director Phil Demery.

 “You want to start on things that are so far away from where we are now," Chambers said. "To go from 60 percent to 100 percent, we could spend all day talking about that.

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"Why not focus on some result that’s more specific and realistic," Chambers added. "Ssomething like --we have to get to 80 percent in five years?”

At the same time, Healdsburg is planning to work with the Geysers on wastewater treatment, according to an article today in the Press Democrat.

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Demery, meanwhile, who serves on the year-old Solid Waste Advisory Committee (SWAG), said at Tuesday's Healdsburg City Council meeting that the county needs to adopt new methods of waste diversion to move more waste away from local landfills and treat it for recycling.

 Sonoma County currently recycles slightly less than two-thirds of its waste, Demery said, adding the recycled waste was used with such things as irrigation, wetlands creation and geothermal energy production. The remaining third goes into landfills.

SWAG has a goal of recycling close to 100 percent of the county’s waste through the adoption of new refinement technology and a public education campaign, Demery said.

In order to move that ahead, Demery told Healdsburg City Council, the organization wants Sonoma County to do an economic feasibility study to explore the likelihood of meeting that goal.

“Over a third of what’s in the garbage is organics, and that is the highest component of the county’s food waste,” Demery said. “What we don’t have, and what we want to create, is a facility to (recycle) the waste from dairy and meat products.

"… We are recommending a feasibility study for the Santa Rosa Laguna Wastewater Treatment Plant to treat these and other kinds of waste,” Demery said.

But Healdsburg councilmembers said that a 100 percent diversion goal was unrealistic and a waste of time to study.

Councilmember Jim Wood complained that SWAG’s project methodology was backwards. Specifically, Wood said the committee came up with its 100 percent figure right off the bat, instead of systematically determining a reasonable goal for increasing wastewater recycling and then studying how to get there.

In addition, he said he was “puzzled” by the lack of cooperation between SWAG and the Sonoma County Water Agency, whom he said should have played a crucial role in developing the feasibility study.

Wood also said the committee hired a third party consultant to study the issue behind closed doors and without an open bidding process.

“We are not trash experts,” Wood said. “In reality, does it make sense to study a cost analysis of emerging technologies?

"One, they’re just emerging," Wood said. "Two, it seems highly unlikely that we’d have the money to use them … I feel like I’m getting just enough information here to make a decision that I’ll regret a year down the road.”

Demery defended the feasibility study, saying that the county -- not Healdsburg or any other city -- was paying for it.

He said the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors had approved the private consultant commissioned to carry it out. He also said had come to the city council meeting to hear the type of feedback Wood was providing, and that he would relay it back during future SWAG meetings.

Councilman Gary Plass said local municipalities are still on the hook for various waste management costs, even though waste management oversight may be a county function.

“There could be changes to tipping fees (charges per ton of waste), charges added to the our contract, and there’s still the issue of what our exact liability is for the landfill," Plass said.

" … We have to be responsible to our constituents," Plass added. "The city has got to know what those charges could be --we can’t just sign a blank check.”

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