Composting site in peril

Several members of Petaluma’s close-knit agriculture community are lending their voices to a lobbying effort in support of Sonoma Compost, a company that faces an uphill battle to remain in operation amid ongoing legal challenges and the looming possibility of shutdown by water quality regulators.

Supporters argue that the private company, which contracts to provide composting services at a site near the Central Landfill, offers a cheaper and less environmentally damaging option to trucking compostable waste outside of the county and importing compost from elsewhere.

As legal costs from a lawsuit by neighbors adds to the pressure of complying with an order by regulators to capture all rainwater runoff at the compost facility, customers themselves said they are feeling increased concern as they contemplate the impact that a shutdown would have on their own operations.

“Sonoma Compost is an essential tool in our sustainable farming operation,” said Nick Papadopoulos, whose family owns the 45-acre Bloomfield Organics farm off of Valley Ford Road.

The emergence of an organized group advocating for Sonoma Compost’s survival became apparent during last week’s meeting of the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors, where a series of supporters used the regular public comment period as a platform for voicing their concern. About 25 members of the group also addressed Wednesday’s meeting of the Sonoma County Waste Management Agency, which leases the compost site from the county and oversees its operations. The agency met in closed session to determine the site’s future.

In addition to the immediate economic impact, supporters, many of them from the Petaluma-area agriculture community, argued that the loss of a local compost facility would diminish the region’s growing farm-to-table movement.

“You go to any farmers’ market and ask people why they are shopping there. They might tell you it’s because the food is fresh, but a lot of people will tell you that they also want to support something local. Growing food locally from soil trucked in from elsewhere seems backwards,” said Evan Wiig, executive director of The Farmers Guild, a trade group for smaller-scale farmers with a chapter based in Petaluma.

Sonoma County, which owns and leases the land where the compost facility is located, has spent $350,000 so far on the lawsuit alleging illegal discharge of runoff into the nearby Stemple Creek, said Supervisor David Rabbitt, whose district encompasses southern Sonoma County.

While acknowledging the benefits of a local composting facility for both diverting waste from the landfill and supporting regional agriculture, Rabbitt expressed frustration that the county is facing those costs after years in which it was only one of ten members setting policy as part of the waste agency joint powers authority. The money could otherwise be used to help fund development of a new compost facility, a goal that has existed ever since the current site began operating 20 years ago, he said.

“There’s shared frustration by a lot of people on how we got here,” he said. “I think there’s places we could have looked at long ago.”

Several Petaluma-Area customers of Sonoma Compost said they understood the long-term intention to open a new composting facility in Sonoma County, but that even a temporary shutdown of local services would have a negative impact.

In the case of Petaluma Poultry, a chicken processor with hundreds of local employees, that would mean finding a new home for the truckload of feathers brought to the compost site each day, said Mike Leventini, general manager. The company worked with Sonoma Compost to develop a method for integrating those feathers with the stream of green waste seven years ago.

Other options include transporting feathers outside of the county for processing into tallow, developing a compost program with a facility elsewhere or simply disposing of the feathers in the local landfill, he said.

“We were looking for a sustainable way to dispose of those feathers,” he said. “It’s also cheaper for us if we don’t have to drive far to dispose of this stuff.”

On the buyer side, the facility offers a product that is in high demand for local farmers and gardeners, said Tiffany René, president of the Petaluma Grange and a former city councilwoman.

“It’s a very affordable product for them that increases their yield. It speaks to their bottom line,” she said.

The City of Petaluma itself would also be affected. While the city’s curbside compost - the green bin - is currently hauled to Novato’s Redwood Landfill, Petaluma buys mulch from Sonoma Compost for use in the “Mulch Madness” lawn replacement program.

The program, considered one tool in the city’s quiver for helping residents reduce their water use amid new statewide mandates, has been responsible for converting one million square feet of turf to drought-tolerant landscaping in Petaluma, said Dan St. John, the city’s director of public works.

“We use Sonoma Compost because they are close by, their prices are competitive and they produce good quality mulch,” St. John, who also represents Petaluma on the waste agency board, said in an email. The city would seek an alternative if the facility were to shut down, he said.

Redwood Landfill also operates a compost program with a related retail component, but at a higher cost to consumers. Basic compost is $23 per yard, compared to the $17 price for the equivalent product from Sonoma Compost.

The county of Sonoma, the waste agency and Sonoma Compost are all named in the federal lawsuit by residents of the Happy Acres subdivision, which alleges that the facility allowed runoff to pollute the nearby Stemple Creek for years in violation of the federal Clean Water Act. There was no agreement reached in a settlement hearing last week.

A plan to build expanded capacity for ponds to catch runoff at the site, meanwhile, has been stymied by allegations that construction would damage habitat for the endangered tiger salamander.

The situation has added up to a major roadblock in complying with an order by the North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board to catch all runoff at the site. The regulator said in 2014 that any runoff could result in fines of $10,000 per day, but has so far stopped short of issuing a deadline that could force a shutdown.

Meanwhile, the county itself has said that it will terminate its lease with the agency if further runoff catchment capacity is not constructed by October of this year. The agency would then be required to haul 100,0000 tons of annual green waste elsewhere, adding to the cost for ratepayers outside of Petaluma.

Will Bakx, co-founder of Sonoma Compost, said he was unsure of alternatives for his 25-employee company if the current site is forced to shut down.

“Right now, I’m not looking at the long term. I’m looking at what it’s going to take to save this facility,” he said.

An online petition at Change.org suggesting measures to keep the facility open has collected nearly 3,000 signatures. It remains unclear whether those measures, which include shrinking the inflow of material to the site, would resolve its current challenges.

The waste agency declined to comment on the matter, citing the ongoing litigation.

The Petaluma City Council cited expected costs surrounding the future of an in-county compost facility as a factor in its decision to direct curbside green waste to the Redwood Landfill. The city’s ratepayers are thus largely insulated from a spike in costs expected if a shutdown forces such waste to be hauled outside of the county.

Yet the story is different for those purchasing compost from the site or delivering compostable waste there directly.

“What’s absolutely true is that our crops grow better because of Sonoma Compost,” said Connie Madden, owner of Oasis Community Farm in Petaluma.

(Contact Eric Gneckow at eric.gneckow@arguscourier.com.)