Trash isn’t the only thing steaming near the John Smith Road Landfill, and the dump isn’t the only thing getting trashed.
After what was described as a heated debate at Monday’s town hall-style meeting in Tres Pinos over the proposed “Resource Recovery Park” at the John Smith Road Landfill, Supervisor Jaime De La Cruz started off a follow-up meeting Tuesday and set a different tone.
“I’ll say it straight out. If you start yelling at me, I’ll walk out the door,” De La Cruz told the crowd of more than 40 people, in reference to the prior night’s meeting where two other supervisors took a verbal thumping. “I have a wife at the hospital right now, and that’s more important to me, my family. But I’m here to listen to you guys.”
His demeanor didn’t stop meeting organizer and John Smith Road Landfill neighbor Tammy Jackson from getting straight to her point about her family’s concerns, shared by many other supporters in the audience.
“Last night got a little heated,” Jackson said. “As supervisors, you all have to understand – some of us are taking this to heart. And it’s not just, it’s in our back yard.”
Jackson went on to summarize many of the complaints from her family and others neighboring the site such as worries about traffic and estimates of 433 additional vehicles per day; economic benefits and leakage to other counties; water shortages; fire protection; plumbing; and overall lacking infrastructure in that area.
“We would like to ask you to vote no next week, to at least postpone it,” said Jackson, who added that opponents are not asking for an outright denial next Tuesday, but they do ultimately want one.
Crowds gathered this Monday and Tuesday nights at the church hall in Tres Pinos to alert supervisors about their concerns regarding the Resource Recovery Park proposal. San Benito County Integrated Waste Management is overseeing the proposal on 30 acres, owned by San Benito County, south of the John Smith Road Landfill. At Tuesday’s meeting, residents talked face to face with De La Cruz and Supervisor Robert Rivas.
Those meetings came as a precursor to next Tuesday, when supervisors are scheduled to weigh a crucial step in the planning process, to rezone the recovery park property. Specifically, the proposal is to amend the general plan’s land-use designation from “agricultural productive” to “public/quasi public” and change it to a new zone called “Resource Recovery Park.” According to the EIR, the zone change is necessary to identify the types of “facilities and activities” allowed on the site. County and landfill officials have been planning the project that is intended to provide business opportunities in such areas as solid waste storage, transfer, treatment, processing and other activities related to recycling, according to the environmental impact report.
The prospect of a zone change has residents such as Jackson alarmed that it would act as a step toward final approval.
De La Cruz contended that is not the case.
“It is just a rezoning,” De La Cruz said. “There is no application attached to it.”
One resident expressed concern to Rivas about the possibility of one large company coming in and using the entire site, as opposed to a diversity of businesses.
“Is that a possibility? Sure, why not?” Rivas said, adding that it would take three supervisors to say otherwise.
Integrated Waste Management Director Mandy Rose responded about the opposition’s meetings in an email. She provided specific EIR responses to some of the neighbors’ complaints and a comment about the opposition.
“You also asked what I thought of the ‘opposition’ to this project; first of all my opinion is irrelevant but what is important is that it is part of our democratic process and is welcome as civility would be; in America we have the privilege to agree to disagree civilly,” she wrote.
Look back for video from Tuesday’s meeting.
What is a Resource Recovery Park?
According to CalRecycle, a Resource Recovery Park is a new development in recycling. In its broadest sense, it is the colocation of reuse, recycling, compost processing, manufacturing, and retail businesses in a central facility. The public can bring all their wastes and recoverable materials to this facility at one time.
An RR park may also be called an integrated resource recovery facility, serial materials recovery facility (MRF), recycling estate, industrial recycling park, recycling-based industrial park, or discard mall. A number of market forces are encouraging this type of development.
