Board affirms negative declaration for Hay Road landfill agreement after hours-long public hearing

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors on Tuesday unanimously affirmed the Planning Department's negative declaration for a proposed agreement that would allow the city's municipal solid waste to be hauled to the Hay Road landfill in Solano County.

Appellants, led by the Solano County Orderly Growth Committee, asked the board to reverse the department's decision and require a full environmental impact report (EIR). They said the decision understates the environmental consequences of routing up to 50 daily round trips of large-haul trucks to Hay Road and fails to analyze cumulative impacts on air quality, public health and regional traffic patterns.

"To say that there is no environmental impact, nothing, is just mind boggling to me," Duane Cromm, representing the appellants, told the board, arguing the environmental review ignored new truck traffic that would be introduced to Solano and Contra Costa counties.

Appellants' attorneys argued the review improperly "piecemealed" the project, did not assess the full disposal project as a whole and used incomplete or inconsistent data for future waste generation. Attorney Courtney Ross Tate told the board the appellate evidence showed "a completely fair…