Yuck, a mountain of trash for Nevada

Launce Rake, Las Vegas Sun

Friday, Oct. 6, 2006 | 7:41 a.m.

A California garbage company has taken over a Nevada landfill, positioning itself to transport trash by railroad through Las Vegas to its final burial grounds.

Commissioners in cash-strapped Lincoln County approved a 49-year agreement this week with San Francisco-based Norcal Waste Services to operate a landfill in exchange for about $1 million annually in fees, making garbage the county's largest single source of revenue.

Norcal would be allowed to ship up to 4,000 tons daily from Southern California to tiny Crestline, about 25 miles east of Panaca.

Norcal spokesman Robert Reed said the company doesn't yet have agreements to ship California waste to Nevada, "but we are looking at that opportunity."

The landfill's previous operator, Nevada's Crestline Disposal and Recycling Inc., didn't pursue out-of-state trash.

Norcal is not the only company mulling Nevada's vast rural areas for use as landfills. Nevada Resource Recovery Group LLC is planning to open a landfill on the site of a former Kennecott Mining Co. gold and silver mine in Mineral County, about 35 miles northeast of Hawthorne, according to Nevada Environmental Protection Division documents.

Because solid waste is a commodity, it can be transported between states in accordance with the Interstate Commerce Act, so Nevada can neither block it nor unfairly tax it. In fact, the Silver State has been accepting income-producing solid waste from California for years, including 500,000 tons in 2002 that mostly went into a landfill east of Reno from Lake Tahoe, the Sierra foothills and Sacramento.

Republic Services, which handles Clark County's urban garbage and operates one of the nation's largest landfills in Apex, northwest of Las Vegas, does not import out-of-state trash, but isn't ruling it out .

Republic Services spokesman Will Flowers said the trend of transporting trash long distances is a result of bigger landfills serving ever larger geographic areas, he said.

"There is absolutely nothing wrong with the process of shipping waste ... It looks like this trend is going to continue as municipalities continue to search for a cost-effective and environmentally sound disposal location for their waste."

On the five-member board, only Lincoln County Commissioner Rhonda Hornbeck voted against extending the county's agreement with Norcal. Hornbeck said her primary concern was the length of the approval, which extended the existing agreement from five years to 49 years.

"Am I real happy they're bringing in waste from other places, from California? No, but basically, I understand the fact that if you took a county as small as ours and tried to make waste collection sustainable, that's pretty tough. They're going to have to take in waste from other places."