# San Diego County Considers Raising landfill Fees to Fund Environmental Programs
San Diego County charges local landfills 2 cents for each ton of waste they process. And that fee hasn’t changed in 28 years.
Now, seeing an opportunity to raise money for environmental projects, local environmentalists are hoping the county will raise it.
San Diego County’s fee is “artificially low,” Solana Centre for Environmental Innovation Executive director jessica Toth told the County Board of Supervisors in August. She said increasing the fee would “go a long way” towards several environmental goals, including tackling textile waste.
Under state law, counties have the authority to set waste disposal fees, but San Diego County hasn’t changed its fee since 1997. Last year that fee brought in just under $70,000. The money generated primarily pays for the administrative costs of overseeing the landfills, said Donna Durckel, a spokesperson for the county’s land use and surroundings group.
Counties around the state have set their fee dollars higher than San Diego and use the money to fund environmental programs and outreach. Local environmentalists say San Diego County should do the same.
Toth,members of the Sierra Club and other activists are asking the county to raise the waste disposal fees to $1.02 per ton. That would bring in around $3.4 million annually the county could use to comply with state environmental laws at a time when the county faces $300 million in federal cuts.
“It’s really a win-win for the county,” Ron Askeland, chair of the Sierra Club Conservation Committee, told supervisors.
From the Documenters
This story came by way of a news tip by Brisa Karow, a Documenter in inewsource’s San Diego Documenters program, which trains and pays community members to document what happens at public meetings.
Board of Supervisors Chair Terra Lawson-Remer seemed receptive to the group’s proposal at the August meeting and directed staff to look into what the county could do.
“Is there some kind of program that would be county wide that could fill in the gaps that the cities have?” she asked.
Durckel said staff met in September with environmentalists. Askeland, who attended that meeting with the county, told inewsource he’s hopeful the county will make the change.
Laura Anthony, president of Zero waste San Diego, encouraged supervisors to increase the fee to help fund programs to educate the public on how to reduce their waste and stop throwing “valuable resources” that could be reused into the landfill.
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