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 argument" that further review was required under CEQA.

Planning staff and the Department of the Environment contended otherwise. Sarah Jones, the Planning Department's environmental review officer, and Paul Maltzer, the department's lead on the analysis, said staff prepared an initial study and a more than 100-page technical analysis of all CEQA checklist topics. Maltzer said transportation and air quality received the most scrutiny and that the work followed air district methodologies and recognized thresholds. He told the board the proposed project adds about 50 truck round trips per day on average and that, when compared to baseline conditions, the modeled changes were below CEQA significance thresholds.

Guillermo Rodriguez, representing the Department of the Environment and the project sponsor, said the project includes a contractual cap of an annual average of 50 round-trip trucks per day. He also described programs and technology recology and the city are implementing to reduce the overall landfill-bound waste stream, including textile pickup programs and new processing equipment that could recover additional organics and recyclables. Rodriguez noted short sample periods showing Recology was operating under the 50-trip cap in recent weeks.

Recology representatives described investments in diversion and processing technology and urged the board to uphold the negative declaration. Opponents including the Sierra Club, Friends of the Earth and neighborhood groups urged the board to require an EIR to study health, air quality and cumulative impacts on communities along the proposed routes.

After hearing from the appellant, dozens of public commenters on both sides, staff and Recology, the board voted on a motion to affirm the Planning Department's negative declaration (Item 42) and to table the motions asking reversal and directing findings (Items 43 and 44). The clerk recorded an 11-0 vote in favor of the department's determination and the negative declaration was certified unanimously.

The appeal raised several recurring technical points: the number of potential daily truck trips (the planning analysis used an average of 50 round trips per 6-day work week), whether the project description properly defined the "project" for CEQA (appellants argued the project should be treated as the full disposal of municipal solid waste, not merely the change in haul destination), and whether Solano County's permitting and landfill capacity assumptions were adequately considered. The Planning Department and Department of the Environment said they considered landfill capacity (Hay Road's permitted acceptance) and found impacts less than significant, following accepted modeling techniques.

By affirming the negative declaration, the board leaves the project moving forward administratively under the terms of the proposed disposal agreement, subject to any contract conditions, monitoring, and the cap on truck trips described by staff. Appellants may still seek judicial review under CEQA if they choose; the board vote itself was a certification of the department's environmental determination and not a contract award.

Votes at a glance

- Item 42 (motion to affirm Planning Department negative declaration): Adopted, 11-0. - Items 43 and 44 (motions to reverse or direct findings): Tableed.

What's next: The negative declaration certification allows the city to proceed toward finalizing the disposal agreement as described in staff reports, subject to the project terms. Any future changes in projected disposal volumes, revised truck caps, or other contract amendments would likely trigger additional environmental review.