MINUTES OF THE METRO COUNCIL

SOLID WASTE & RECYCLING COMMITTEE MEETING

Wednesday, October 16, 2002

Council Chamber

Present:    Bill Atherton (Chair), Susan McLain (Vice Chair), Rod Park

Absent:    David Bragdon (excused), Rod Monroe (excused).

Chair Atherton called the meeting to order at 3:35 p.m.

2.  REGIONAL ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT (REM) DIRECTOR’S BRIEFING

Dr. Petersen, Regional Environmental Management Director, briefed the committee on the progress being made to renew the St. Johns Landfill Permit by the end of the year, provided a regulatory update regarding solid waste facility licenses for K.B. Recycling, Pacific Land Clearing III and American Roof Recycling, and updated the work REM is doing with the City of Portland and other local governments in the region for processing food waste that cannot be recovered for human consumption. (For more detail, see the copy of the Regional Environmental Management Director’s Updates attached to the permanent record of this meeting).

Councilor McLain commented on the need to have a closure plan for the St. Johns Landfill. Dr. Petersen responded that once the risk assessment was done they would know what, if any additional remedial actions would be needed and the costs of those. He added that the bigger goal was to protect the environment and they had made that priority clear to DEQ. He said before they could decide on what steps to take, they had to agree on the risks. He said the environmental testing and deciding on the risks would take some time. Councilor McLain commented that they had been working for 10 years, which she felt was excessive. She hoped they could get to an agreement on the protocols before another 10 years. She asked Dr. Petersen to report back to the committee with a timeline after his conversation with Sally Puent, Manager of the program at DEQ. Chair Atherton asked about the legalities of the landfill not being closed. Marv Fjordbeck responded that the question they are working on is the extent of the risk and liabilities associated with a closed landfill. The basic difficulty DEQ was having is that there are both hazardous and non-hazardous substances there. Dr. Petersen said they would have a draft shortly and then a comment period in the fall for the final permit and he thought the environmental assessment could take up to three years, which is not unusual for this type of cleanup site. Councilor McLain thought they should not wait for DEQ to sign off before they started doing the internal work on the closure plan.

1.  CONSIDERATION OF THE MINUTES OF THE SEPTEMBER 18, 2002 SOLID WASTE & RECYCLING COMMITTEE MEETING.

3.  RESOLUTION NO. 02-3231, FOR THE PURPOSE OF CONFIRMING THE APPOINTMENTS OF JAMES STRATHMAN, BERNARD DEAZLEY, DEAN KAMPFER, AND PAUL MATTHEWS TO THE SOLID WASTE RATE REVIEW COMMITTEE

Dr. Petersen reviewed the resolution to reappoint four people to the rate review committee. He described the good work the nominees had been doing advising about rate policies and urged approval of the resolution.

Chair Atherton will carry the resolution to the full council.

4.  PERFORMANCE OF OCTOBER 2001 METRO CODE REVISIONS FOR TRANSFER STATIONS

Dr. Petersen reviewed the report on how well the regulations adopted last October had been performing (see copy of the report included in the agenda packet with the permanent record of this meeting). Some key conclusions from the report were that the regulations adopted last October have proven to be a good regulatory framework and provide a good basis to make decisions on local transfer stations. He did not see a need for any significant changes to those code provisions. Secondly, he recommended that the committee let the tonnage cap issue play out for a while longer as he had not seen any urgent reasons to adjust those caps at this point. He pointed out that there had been more dry waste diverted away from the landfills in Washington County, but that reduction of vehicle miles traveled (VMT) had been mixed and there had not been a significant reduction. He noted comments about the draft report had included one about additional waste possibly ending up going to the Forest Grove transfer station. The concern was about the lack of recovery at that facility. He also noted a letter from Waste Management he had recently received with a number of concerns about the report (a copy of the letter is included with the permanent record of this meeting). In response to a question from Councilor Park, Dr. Petersen said the report did not contain a measure of actual VMT changes, but an index measuring the percentage of waste going to the nearest facility now as compared to a year ago. He said it was possible that an increase in economic activity further away from a transfer station could cause more waste to move farther, but he did not think that was the case here because they could identify specific geographic franchises on the ground that were now going further than they were a year ago which was not related to business activity. Councilor McLain commented that in some places it was related to ownership. Dr. Petersen responded that other reasons could be that the cap had increased and that there had been changes in ownership patterns so those vertically integrated companies that own their own transfer stations now had the ability to bring more waste in to their facilities. Councilor McLain thought the configurations of the loads could be different due to the food waste issue. .

Chair Atherton asked Dean Kampfer, Waste Management, Inc., if he would like to comment on their letter. Mr. Kampfer responded that the Forest Grove Transfer Station is regional, not local, so they felt it was not appropriate to include it in a report on local transfer stations. He also commented that there were other important variables besides VMTs regarding how waste flowed through the region, i.e., vehicle time traveled and safety issues. He added that the increased in VMTs in the report could have been due to Metro’s issuance of non-system licenses so waste flowing out of the east county was now going to Vancouver. He also noted that the Forest Grove Transfer Station was taking predominately wet waste which .s not high end recovery so that was not an issue there. Councilor McLain said staff had been following committee instructions when they included the Forest Grove franchise agreement in the report. She added that she and Councilor Monroe had been very emphatic about the relationship between regional and local transfer stations, and when they were asking in the report about the functions of a local transfer station, they had to consider what may be defined as regional or not regional as it relates to the whole system. Councilor Park commented that VMTs was one measurement the committee had to use, and there was a state and federal mandate to reduce them. He said they had the discussion regarding time and distance, but there was no requirement for a 20% reduction in time as there was in miles traveled. He noted that time could be different depending on the time of day or even the day traveled.

5.  REVIEW OF FINDINGS AND RECOMMENDATIONS IN METRO REPORT ON COMMINGLED COMMERCIAL RECYCLABLES PROCESSING

Lee Barrett, Waste Reduction and Outreach Manager, reviewed findings and recommendations from the commingled commercial recyclables processing study recently concluded by the REM Department (see copy of the Executive Summary: Processing of Mixed Commercial Recyclables, with cover letter, included with the permanent record of this meeting). He said currently, 120,000 additional tons of recovery would be needed from the commercial sector in order to meet a 56% recovery rate by 2005. The findings showed that there is more than sufficient capacity in the present material recovery facilities in this region to process the anticipated increased material, but because of that excess capacity, the MRFs feel forced to accept materials that perhaps, in a less competitive environment, they would be a little more selective about receiving, out of economic necessity to pay for the infrastructure improvements they have made, i.e., new machinery and sorting equipment. He said they were a little concerned that the study shows that as they ask for more recycling containers to be put into businesses, it does not look like the facilities are doing as good a job at recovering those containers. Councilor McLain was concerned about quality of the end product. Mr. Barrett felt most of the quality problem was primarily with the fiber grade. He continued that, a number of recommendations came out of this study; primarily, a suggestion that the Solid Waste Advisory Committee (SWAC) establish a subcommittee to look at the contamination issue and make recommendations about how it should be collected and processed. Councilor McLain noted that it would be crucial to get people who would actually use the product on subcommittee. She said she would bring it up at the next SWAC meeting.

Dave White, ORRA, noted that end uses were mentioned when talking about the constitution of this new subcommittee. He said the committee should understand that the haulers were trying to help accomplish recycling goals as well as be concerned about the cost to their customers for service. He commented that the committee was not delving into collection by analyzing how the haulers should collect. He said it is important to have representation, or at least buy-in, from local governments because they are the ones who have to go to their constituents to raise rates to cover the costs of recovery.

ADJOURN

There being no further business to come before the Solid Waste & Recycling Committee, Chair Atherton adjourned the meeting at 4:41 p.m.

Prepared by

Cheryl Grant

Council Assistant

Attachments to the Public Record for the

Solid Waste & Recycling Committee Meeting of October 16, 2002

Testimony Cards:

None.