An important victory: Garbage disposal contract

Milpitas’ 30-year contract with Republic Services for garbage collection and disposal (landfill) ends in September 2017. City is currently finalizing 2 separate new contracts: a 10-year garbage collection and 20-year disposal contract.

On Tuesday March 14th, during the Milpitas City Council meeting, the residents of Milpitas has scored an important victory. The garbage disposal contract for the next 20 years was awarded to Waste Management Inc (Guadalupe landfill, San Jose). As residents of Milpitas, we’ll no longer bury our waste in our own backyard (Newby Island Landfill on Dixon Landing). Guadalupe landfill received 34 unconfirmed odor complaints in the last 2 years while Newby has about 3,000 complaints in Milpitas in the last 12 months.

We have sent a clear message to Republic Services (Newby Island Landfill’s operator) that having a landfill next to a residential area and environmentally sensitive wildlife refuge no longer provide them with a competitive advantage. We, the people, are standing up to defend our rights for clean air/water and we have the will and determination to continue fighting until the landfill has been closed.

Having a landfill at the doorstep of Milpitas did not help Republic Service to get the disposal (landfill) contract from Milpitas. Also having a landfill in the heart of Silicon Valley will hurt their garbage collection business as well.

Milpitas has started the evaluation process for the garbage collection 10 year contract valued at an estimated amount of $100M+. Shortlisting process has already started to narrow down from the current 6 bidders.

Please join our efforts of emailing City Council members to NOT AWARD THE GARBAGE COLLECTION CONTRACT TO REPUBLIC SERVICES as long as they pursue their landfill expansion permit which would raise the landfill’s height to an unprecedented 250 feet and extend the life of the landfill indefinitely.

Cut/Paste these email addresses and send your comments directly to the city council:

jesteves@ci.milpitas.ca.gov; cmontano@ci.milpitas.ca.gov; dgiordano@ci.milpitas.ca.gov; gbarbadillo@ci.milpitas.ca.gov; mgrilli@ci.milpitas.ca.gov

Every email counts.

The smelly Newby Island Landfill is a San Jose facility and under San Jose’s jurisdiction. Although Milpitas won’t be dumping its Garbage at Newby, other cities will still be using the facility, so it will remain open until it reaches capacity. If the expansion permit goes through, the landfill will be open for a very very long time.

Republic’s long term disposal contract with City of San Jose ends in 2020, Cupertino in 2023, Santa Clara in 2024. I believe Los Altos Hills contract ends before 2023. If we want a shot to keep the closure date in 2025 (as originally promised when the expansion was proposed in 2007 and approved in 2012), we need to make sure no new long term contracts are ever granted.

Jerry Brown signed AB341 to mandate 75% diversion by year 2020 (http://www.calrecycle.ca.gov/75percent/). Where as City of San Jose adopted a more aggressive goal to achieve 100% diversion (zero waste) by 2022. Since the state law lags city level goals, we can’t use existing state laws to force landfill closure. There are recent reports that San Jose’s recycling rate has been dropping. So there’s no telling if it can really achieve it’s 2022 target.

Stopping Milpitas’s contract renewal is the first step.