Legislation designed to stop burning trash as an alternative to sending it to landfills has been signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom.
AB1857, authored by Assemblywoman Cristina Garcia (D-Bell Gardens), was aimed specifically at the Southeast Resource Recovery Facility (SERRF) on Terminal Island in the Port of Long Beach. The plant has been burning trash from Long Beach and surrounding cities for more than 30 years, using the heat to generate electricity.
“It’s long overdue that we end the farce of pretending burning trash is recycling or composting,” Garcia said in a statement. “Municipal waste incinerators are a reminder of how environmental racism can become normalized as a policy neutral solution when the story is always more complicated. It is hard to ignore the 30 years of lived experiences from frontline communities which live near an incinerator and the scientific data that shows the harmful impacts from these facilities.”
A second municipal incinerator is in Stanislaus County and also is impacted by the legislation.
Long Beach officials have disputed Garcia’s claim that SERRF emits toxic gas or that the ash is hazardous waste.
Bob Dowell, director of the city’s Department of Energy Resources, said in a March story that the plant only emits carbon dioxide — and eliminates much more methane from landfills by getting rid of trash that otherwise would be dumped. The ash is solidified before transport and is used in road surfacing material, he added.
Even before the legislation passed, the city had been considering whether to refurbish the 30-plus-year-old facility. A $7.8 million expenditure for upgrades was approved in 2018, with the work expected to keep the plant viable through 2024.
“AB 1857 will eliminate the diversion credit that jurisdictions receive for using SERRF and other transformation facilities,” Long Beach city spokesman Kevin Lee said Monday in an email. “City staff continues to review to understand the full impact on Long Beach.
“Staff continues to review and will contemplate all possible scenarios over the next month or so and will bring to Council,” he added.
Long Beach contracts with a private company to operate the facility, paying for it with state diversion credits — a way for cities to get cash for diverting trash from landfills — and dumping fees from surrounding cities. Dowell has said surrounding cities likely would return to taking refuse to landfills without the diversion credits, although municipalities also are under state requirements to divert 50% or more of trash away from landfills.
Instead, Garcia is promoting the concept of a “zero-waste economy,” where essentially everything would be recycled. She is supported by environmental groups Earthjustice and East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice, among others.
City Manager Tom Modica sent a two-page letter to the governor’s office on Sept. 2 urging him to veto AB1857, noting that the bill does not set aside any money to support creation of a zero waste economy.
“In the many years — perhaps decades — it will take to get to zero waste in California, the bill will simply exacerbate the environmental impacts of waste management given the lack of available alternatives to landfilling,” the letter says.
“The legislation will undermine the state’s environmental goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by forcing jurisdictions to haul municipal solid waste to landfills across California and in neighboring states,” the letter adds. “Transporting just the City’s waste to a landfill, instead of using SERRF, could increase annual truck trips by hundreds of thousands of miles, resulting in significant air quality impacts.”
At the same time, the state has required an aggressive effort to eliminate organic waste through recycling and composting. Organic waste is the primary producer of methane in landfills. Long Beach has a pilot program in place and expects to expand residential organic waste collection in the next year.
It is uncertain whether SERRF can or will be a component in the organic waste program, or the city’s refuse program. While AB1857 eliminates the diversion credits, it does not directly require the shutdown of municipal generators.
“But a lot of the equipment is approaching its end of life,” Dowell said in March. “We are studying ways to improve and upgrade, perhaps marry an organic waste diversion component. One way or another, by 2024, we’re going to need significant capital.”
