GILROY
– The leading garbage and recycling business in southern Santa
Clara County intends to move its transfer station from San Martin
to Gilroy’s eastern gateway.
Though they don’t plan to do it for three to five years, city
planners already have a serious problem with it.
GILROY – The leading garbage and recycling business in southern Santa Clara County intends to move its transfer station from San Martin to Gilroy’s eastern gateway.
Though they don’t plan to do it for three to five years, city planners already have a serious problem with it.
Nevertheless, a company spokesman says the proposed transfer station on state Highway 152 would be virtually “invisible.”
South Valley Disposal & Recycling Inc. – a subsidiary of the San Francisco-based Norcal Waste Systems Inc. – has signed a lease with Gilroy landowner Al DeFrancesco for the former WTI trucking company site across the highway from Gilroy Foods, Norcal spokesman Don Gambelin confirmed Thursday. The land is just inside the city limit.
“I think there are some sites in Gilroy which could accommodate that kind of use,” city planning director Bill Faus said, but city officials he talked to “were very apprehensive about this site.”
“If people come in from 152 to Gilroy, it will be one of the first things they will see,” planner Melissa Durkin said.
The city’s concerns go way beyond aesthetics, according to Durkin and Faus. Adding garbage-truck traffic would further congest this notorious bottleneck, right where 152 drops from four lanes to two. There also are questions about odor and air quality.
Also, Durkin said, “It is just about adjacent to one of our regionally important shopping centers” – namely, the new Pacheco Pass Center, home of restaurants, Lowe’s, Costco, Best Buy and, soon, a Wal-Mart Supercenter.
Both planners also noted that a transfer station there might interfere with the operations of Gilroy Foods, the city’s largest private employer.
Plus, according to Faus, “it’s adjacent to a flood control channel, so we’re concerned about water quality.
“There are some limitations to this site that I don’t think can be overcome,” Faus said.
Not to fear, Norcal says.
“Those concerns that they named tend to be concerns that we hear in any community that we work with,” Gambelin said. “Our goal is that our operation as a waste management facility is invisible to the community.
“We’ve carefully looked at the site and are confident that the issues that have been raised can be resolved,” he added.
Gambelin noted, however, that he didn’t yet know how his company would overcome each specific concern.
“We’re just getting into some of our preliminary design work and site work,” he said.
City planners expect to sit down with South Valley Disposal officials next week to discuss the proposal. The company has submitted preliminary plans with the city but not a full plan.
South Valley Disposal also would move its truck yard on Alexander Street in Gilroy to the new site, Faus said.
The San Martin Transfer and Recycling station is not a landfill, although it is on the site of one that closed in the 1980s. Garbage from Gilroy, Morgan Hill and unincorporated county areas is dumped there, but it doesn’t stay.
Instead, it is shipped to Norcal’s Pacheco Pass landfill off Bloomfield Road, a few miles east of Gilroy. The company also has a contract with a company in Salinas to deliver some trash there, according to county planner Zachary Goldberg.
The idea to move this temporary dump to Gilroy is relatively new. South Valley Disposal previously wanted to expand the San Martin site and has spent considerable time and expense toward that goal.
For two years, the company worked with county staff and planning commissioners on a proposal that would have let the San Martin station handle four times the waste it deals with now – 1,105 tons compared to the current 275, Goldberg said.
A plan to this effect was filed in January 2002, and a draft environmental impact report was finished in January.
Since then, however, “they’ve kind of come through at the last minute and said, ‘OK, we don’t want to do that anymore,’ ” Goldberg said.
Now, Gilroy is the preferred spot. The company still wants to expand its waste capacity in San Martin, but not to the same extent.
“Pretty much what they want to do is double (the capacity) they have now,” Goldberg said. “They also don’t want to do any improvements on the land.”
Goldberg said he isn’t sure what the company would do with the San Martin site if it moved the transfer station.
“I’ve heard some talk of them turning their site into a park,” he said. South Valley Disposal officials mentioned to county staff that they might give or sell the land to either the county Parks and Recreation Department or to the future city of San Martin, if that community’s incorporation plans come to fruition.
