What to do with waste?

If you’d asked Kara Baker seven years ago what her life would look like in 2014, she probably wouldn’t have envisioned long days and nights poring over garbage data, studying legislation regarding solid waste and getting in the middle of government contracts with local trash haulers.

But such is her life today. Her plans for a solid waste conversion center on Highway 32 have received positive feedback from Glenn County, but her efforts to include Butte County—or, at the very least, Chico—seem to have fallen on deaf ears.

A Willows native, Baker left decades ago for big cities—Oakland and then New York—to study and work in the design and manufacturing business. About 12 years ago she returned to the North State to “get back to my roots.”

“It was after 9/11 and we had a baby and another on the way,” she said during a recent interview in her Chico home. “My husband and I bought a ranch outside of Hamilton City to live a different life.”

Not long after her cross-country move, however, Baker read an article in the Sacramento Valley Mirror about the Glenn County landfill reaching capacity. Suddenly, she had much different plans for her family’s 478-acre property.

“I started approaching the supervisors to ask, ‘Why don’t you consider something different from a landfill?’” she explained. “They said, ‘You’re right—land-filling doesn’t work.’ My odyssey began there, seven years ago.”

Consultants were hired, trips were made across the state and globe, partnerships were formed and blueprints were drawn up. What’s resulted is a plan for the North State Solid Waste Conversion Facility, which would take commercial and household waste—the stuff you throw in garbage cans and recycling bins—to sort, recycle and turn into biogas. The proposed location is on Baker’s land just west of Hamilton City, along Highway 32.

“I’ve gone all over the world kicking tires and looking at different technology,” Baker said. In the end, she settled on two companies in California to partner with on her project. The first, CP Group out of San Diego, designs and manufactures “material recovery facility” systems to sort garbage on the front end. The second, Sacramento’s CleanWorld, specializes in taking the biological waste that’s been sorted through the MRF and turning it into biogas.

Glenn County has been receptive to the project, but Baker says she’s faced opposition from Butte County officials.

“I always felt that it makes sense to include Butte County in this,” she said. “I’ve gone out knocking on doors, but I get dismissed as a nut or a whacko.”

Bill Mannel may not think Baker is a whacko. But the solid waste manager at the Butte County-owned Neal Road Recycling and Waste facility does have some serious concerns about diverting Chico’s trash to Glenn County. On the most basic level, according to numbers crunched for Baker’s feasibility study, it would divert about 63,000 tons of trash and recyclables annually from haulers’ yards and the Neal Road landfill. That equals about 26 inbound trucks per day.

“You’re probably talking—and this is a shot in the dark—a couple million dollars of [lost] revenue per year [for Butte County],” Mannel said.

The way it works now, haulers—namely Waste Management and Recology—pick up household and commercial recycling and bring it to their yards to be sorted and sold. They also pick up trash, which they take to the landfill, where they pay a per-pound “tipping fee.” Those fees go toward maintaining the landfill as well as funding programs such as creek cleanups, household hazardous waste disposal and renewable energy projects, Mannel said.

The county recently approved a franchise agreement with the aforementioned haulers to bring county trash exclusively to the Neal Road facility. This is called “flow control.” Chico is in the midst of considering similar franchise agreements that would split the city evenly into two residential zones, and the City Council’s most recent discussion of the matter in September included flow control.

Baker, naturally, is hoping the city will direct flow in her direction. In fact, she’s offering the city financial incentives to do so—to the tune of $350,000 annually.

“We’re able to offer money back because there’s value in what we’ll be getting,” she said, referring to recyclables that the facility would sort, compile and then sell. She also said that her facility would tie its tipping fees to those at the Neal Road landfill, not to the one in Glenn County, which charges more.

Chico City Manager Mark Orme said that Baker’s proposal is worth considering because the city is always looking to be more sustainable, but that it will not affect the current franchise agreements as they are not yet up and running. If and when the city moves forward on the issue, however, it has the authority to redirect flow control.

“Staff was directed to ensure we have the most flexibility in our franchises as possible, and for the City Council to be able to make a determination to direct that flow,” Orme said. “The city, annually, will be able to make a determination to look for alternatives for flow control.”

If the city chooses not to direct flow, the county’s waste-hauling franchise agreements, which direct waste to Neal Road, will be in effect for Chico as well, Orme confirmed.

Baker said she understands why the county would choose not to send its waste her way. But she argues that her technology is more up-to-date, and more capable of diverting waste from our landfills to better uses, than what’s currently in place in Butte County. She pointed to legislation—in particular, Assembly Bills 341, 1826 and 1594, which increase regulation of waste diversion and organic waste. Baker argues that the county is not on track to meet the goals of those bills, which go into full effect in 2020.

Mannel disagreed, saying that not only is the landfill meeting current goals of 50 percent diversion, it’s also in the process of starting up several environmental projects that will make Neal Road similar to Baker’s project.

“We have all the infrastructure in place to do what they’re hoping to do without infrastructure,” Mannel said.

That may or may not be true. Baker’s plans include a high-tech sorting structure, which can pull out metals using magnets; collect glass, plastic and paper; and even funnel food waste to fermentation tanks that will transform it into biogas that can be used in the trucks that haul trash to the facility (assuming they run on compressed natural gas).

The project is in the EIR process now, and the EIR will include the possibility of contracting with Chico as well as Glenn County. Chico’s solid waste franchise agreements are expected to come back before the council in early 2015.