City Council Reluctantly Approves Landfill Deal

Stuck between a rock, a hard place, and a growing mountain of trash, the City Council on Tuesday begrudgingly committed to a 22-year, multimillion-dollar deal with the county to extend the lifespan of the Tajiguas Landfill before it reaches maximum capacity. Their unease came from having to further industrialize an otherwise unspoiled slice of Santa Barbara coastline and facing no better way to deal with the region’s waste streams. “I recognize how distasteful it is to have a landfill on the Gaviota Coast,” said Councilmember Cathy Murillo, “but I’m ready to move forward, acknowledging this is not a perfect solution.”

In a split 4-3 vote, the council agreed to pay $9 million a year to deliver 75,000 tons of trash to the proposed Tajiguas Resource Recovery Project (TRRP), a county-owned facility designed to sort out salable recyclables, generate compost, and convert green waste into electricity. For the project to move forward, it needed the city’s participation ​— ​40 percent of the waste that will flow through the TRRP will come from the city. The rest will come from Goleta, Buellton, Solvang, and the unincorporated parts of the county.

The overall TRRP deal has worked its way through a grueling approval process, with no fewer than 140 public hearings over the last 15 years. Councilmembers were loath to sink it now. “This is a classic dilemma of when to do something,” said Councilmember Gregg Hart, weighing the superior trash-sorting and materials-recovery technologies that will inevitably be developed in the future against the pressing need to keep Tajiguas from filling up now.