Composting plant's closure sets off actions by county, private sector

Jose Fuentes mans the gate at Community Recycling & Resource Recovery Inc. composting facility near Lamont on Wednesday afternoon as a few trucks left the facility.


Jose Fuentes is stationed at the front entrance to Community Recycling & Resource Recovery Inc. composting facility on North Wheeler Ridge Road Wednesday afternoon as a few trucks left the facility.

BY John Cox Californian staff writer
Nov 16 2011
The usual parade of trucks hauling waste into a Lamont composting operation halted Wednesday, signaling an end to business as usual a day after county supervisors pulled the company's operating permit and fined it $2.3 million under a storm of controversy.

As tractor-trailers and employees filed out of Community Recycling & Resource Recovery Inc., company and county representatives began an endgame of sorts that will likely determine what will become of the facility and the waste stream it has processed for the last 18 years.

County staff prepared Wednesday to set a 30-day deadline for the company to clear all compost off the site. They also began looking for nearby property owners to accept the million or so gallons a day of sewer water that Community Recycling had been accepting from the Lamont Public Utility District.

Meanwhile, one of the company's customers, Mountainside Disposal, of Bakersfield, began searching Wednesday for somewhere else to take the roughly 40 tons a week in green waste it collects from the city of Arvin on Mondays and Tuesdays.

"At this point we're looking at a number of different options," company administrator Ray Scott said, noting that there are few alternative destinations in Kern County.

Mountainside's sister company, Price Disposal, recently stopped bringing Community Recycling the green waste it picks up from the Dreyer's Grand Ice Cream manufacturing plant in Bakersfield. Scott said Price began sending that waste to the city of Bakersfield's green waste processing facility shortly after the accident at Community Recycling that led to two deaths last month.

Whether the city facility can take in more waste to help make up for Community Recycling's closure remains to be seen, said Sal Moretti, Bakersfield's solid waste superintendent. Taking in Arvin's material may be a possibility, he said, but because the Bakersfield facility is partly funded by Kern County, it probably won't accept material from Los Angeles County, as Community Recycling did.

"I don't know what materials we can accept from what jurisdictions until we get some clarification," he said.

The situation is among many issues to be resolved in the aftermath of last month's tragic accident at the Lamont site.

Cal-OSHA has reported that 16-year-old Armando Ramirez, working under the identity of a 30-year-old, was cleaning out a drainage tunnel at Community Recycling Oct. 12 when he apparently inhaled a fatal concentration of hydrogen sulfide. His older brother, Heladio, who worked for Bakersfield labor contractor A & B Harvesting Inc., saw him lying unconscious at the bottom of an 8-foot underground shaft and went down to rescue him, only to be overcome as well. Armando was declared dead that day, while Heladio was left brain dead and removed from life support about two days later.

Besides Cal-OSHA, the state labor commissioner and the U.S. Department of Labor have confirmed they are investigating the deaths.

The accident came after years of land use violations and related problems at the facility, and it prompted a community outcry that led to Tuesday's public hearing.

Legal questions 
A number of issues surfaced at the hearing that could have important implications, including potential legal battles.

An attorney for Community Recycling disputed the county's assertions that recent violations such as unauthorized concrete crushing and plastics recycling took place on land covered by the county operating permit. The Bakersfield lawyer, T. Mark Smith, also said the county had failed to post proper notice of the meeting.

Smith could not be reached for comment Wednesday.

Another attorney who represents the family trust that shares responsibility for paying the fines against Community Recycling questioned whether the penalties were excessive. The Encino lawyer, John Marshall, wrote in an email Wednesday that the trust thinks the fines "are not legally supportable."

"We are evaluating all of our options, including legal, and will let you know as soon as we have determined our course of action," he wrote.

For their part, county supervisors voiced concern at Tuesday's hearing that their actions might be misinterpreted as being hostile to business, which they emphasized was not the case.

Supervisor Zack Scrivner, moments before proposing fines of more than $2 million against Community Recycling, said he wanted to send a message that the county was pro-business, "but if you don't follow our rules then you are going to be held accountable."

Clearing the site 
As county staff prepared Wednesday to set the 30-day compost clearing deadline, they fielded questions from Community Recycling's Bakersfield environmental consultant about whether the company is still responsible for the site, said Chuck Lackey, county director of engineering, surveying and permit services.

He said the Bakersfield consultant, WZI Inc. President Mary Jane Wilson, also voiced concerns about the company's ability to manage the product.

"They need to maintain a safe environment," Lackey said, "and (do) whatever they need to do to maintain that safety for the compost as well as for any employees that remain on the site while they're going through the abatement process."

On Wednesday Wilson issued a news release on Community Recycling's behalf stating that the company is working with various agencies to ensure the site's safe closure, even as the company considers its options. 

Lackey also said the county's Environmental Health Services Department was initiating discussions with Community Recycling's neighbors and preparing to secure state approvals for them to take on the Lamont utility district's sewer water.

The district had argued that it needed the composting facility to continue taking its sewer water, otherwise human waste would begin overflowing onto nearby highways within 46 days.

At Tuesday's hearing, county staff disputed the district's claim that there were no viable, affordable options for diverting the waste. The district's attorney, Larry Peake, could not be reached for comment Wednesday.

Over at the Community Recycling site Wednesday, puffs of exhaust rose from the compost mounds -- probably a sign that workers were preparing to clear materials off the property, gate guard Hector Corpus said.

He said the company had told employees nothing about their future, but that some were fully aware of county supervisors' actions -- and were upset by them.

Corpus said he observed a lot of employees leaving much earlier than normal Wednesday.

"They still would've been here," he said, if the company had not lost its permit.