Santa Barbara County’s $250 Million Pig in a Poke

by Andy Caldwell

The unrealistic and wasteful Tajiguas Landfill will bury $250 million. Actual recycling, not so much. Source: Getty Images

Because of the utterly unrealistic ideological goals associated with the progressive left, government programs are failing us on a routine basis at tremendous cost.

One such effort which partially originated here in Santa Barbara, was the recycling movement. The founding executive director of the Community Environmental Center, Paul Relis, is a pioneer in recycling. After leaving CEC, Relis became an executive with the California Environmental Protection Agency where he helped California create the nation’s leading recycling programs that (momentarily) became a multi-billion-dollar industry while “institutionalizing” recycling.

Mr. Relis reappeared recently at a county supervisors’ meeting to watch the most expensive environmental experiment ever in local government go up in smoke. The experiment is the $250 million boondoggle (including interest on the debt) known as the Tajiguas Landfill and Resource Recovery Center. As usual, the county won’t admit they made a mistake in building this white (or should I say green?) elephant.  

The project was supposed to divert recyclable materials from the landfill, create a stream of compost, and create biogas via an anaerobic digestion facility that would create natural gas that could be used to generate electricity. Moreover, by way of diverting all this material from the landfill, it would extend the capacity of the landfill for years to come.

Landfill Facility Filling Up a Dozen Years Sooner Than Projected

The associated failures of the facility include air pollution violations, contaminated compost (glass and plastic are in the mix) that nobody can use, the inability to market the recyclables, and so much trash not being diverted from the landfill that the landfill is slated to fill by 2026 rather than the projected 2038 based on successful diversion rates. The county’s response to all these failures is to blame operator error (they recently fired the operator). 

As boondoggles go, even the strident enviros with the Gaviota Coast Conservancy (GCC) saw this pig in a poke coming down the pike and they are not buying the operator error excuse. Listen to their comments as the failure of this project became manifest to all: “The GCC strongly objected to the Resource Center and supported a lower tech, much more affordable project to achieve the same objectives... It is now clear that the Resource Center faces considerable operational, regulatory, and financial challenges. These challenges have contributed to the Tajiguas landfill filling up much faster than anticipated... However, a new operator will not solve all the problems faced by the facility, many of which are more systemic in nature.”

So, where does Paul Relis, the pioneer, come in? Well, that recycling paradigm he helped create is collapsing. One of the reasons the landfill is filling up is that we are back to burying most of our recyclables. While consumers are still stuck with the cost of recycling deposits on containers of water and soda, among other things, there are not enough facilities left to redeem the materials (they went belly up throughout California). 

Why is that?

China Drops Out of the Recycling Picture

As reported by Huffington Post, “China stopped buying recyclables from the U.S. in 2018 because it was costing them too much to separate the recyclable items from the embedded trash. This decision by China was seriously disruptive because it revealed the weaknesses in our own underdeveloped recycling system. China had been the world’s recycling bin for more than 20 years, accepting an enormous quantity of recyclable waste from nations worldwide. In 2016, China processed at least half of the world’s exports of waste plastic, paper, and metals.” 

The recycling industry is one example of an environmental mirage. In addition to dumping our waste streams into China, we also exported all sorts of pollution generated by the manufacturing and industrial jobs we transferred to China, due to China using dirty coal as a power source, so that we could pretend to be green at home. 

By the way, the costs of the $250 million facility are being paid for via trash rates charged to residents throughout the south county and the Santa Ynez Valley.

How many of you were aware of that?