Huge Utah landfill hits Southland in search of city garbage contracts.

A huge landfill operation in Utah, recently acquired by railroad giant Union Pacific Corp., is aggressively soliciting contracts from Los Angeles County cities to ship their garbage via train and dump it 900 miles away.

East Carbon Development Corp. is "in discussions" with officials of the City of Los Angeles and the Sanitation Districts of Los Angeles County on contracts to take waste by rail to a landfill in East Carbon City, Utah, said David Gavrich, western regional director in the company's San Francisco office.

Since the Utah landfill opened four months ago, about 80 percent of the 140,000 tons of waste dumped there has been industrial waste generated by California companies, said Stephen Noble, facility engineer of ECDC in Utah. The site is one of several waste-by-rail projects in the West vying for L.A.'s trash, but is the only one open for business now, Noble said.

The possibility that Los Angeles County may run out of space to dump its municipal garbage come November, when the permit of the county's largest landfill, in the Puente Hills, expires, is spurring a lot of interest in the Utah site by local cities and the Sanitation Districts, Gavrich said.

Officials for the Sanitation Districts, a joint powers agency of 79 L.A. County cities which owns the Puente Hills landfill, are hopeful that it will get re-permitted, Gavrich said.

But Gavrich said, "They're hedging their bets. That's why they're talking to us."

Steve Maguin, director of solid waste for the Sanitation Districts, confirmed the agency has been discussing "a potential contract" and "ballpark prices" with the Utah company, but denied that the ECDC site was the district's back-up plan if the Puente Hills site is not re-permitted.

"There is no back-up to Puente Hills," Maguin said. "If Puente Hills is not re-permitted, trash will be on the streets."

The plan to extend the operating permit of the Puente Hills site for 20 years also includes expanding its size and building a waste-by-rail loading facility there. It has been met with loud and organized opposition by hundreds of angry Hacienda Heights residents and a major area real estate developer.

The public opposition could stop the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors from approving the project, Maguin noted. In addition to the political peril the project faces, there are two lawsuits pending against the site, which could also shut down operations there, Maguin said.

Maguin said Sanitation Districts officials are talking to several proponents of planned waste-by-rail projects because the Puente Hills plan includes a facility to load 4,000 tons of trash onto a train daily. If the project is approved, the Sanitation Districts will accept bids from the waste-by-rail projects to take Los Angeles County waste.

"We'll be in negotiations with all the viable companies," Maguin said. "It is pretty stupid to deal with just Utah. Hopefully, these other projects will move a lot faster with their permits."

Among several waste-by-rail projects vying for L.A.'s garbage, only the ECDC is approved and open for business, he said.

Other projects include three landfills to be built in Riverside, Imperial and San Bernardino counties, backed by partnerships of major waste companies and major railroad companies.

All of these projects are wending through the government approval process and all are currently meeting strong opposition from local residents.

Gavrich boasted that ECDC is "three to five years ahead" of the other regional projects. All of the projects have the capacity to take hundreds of millions of tons of waste and each could serve L.A.'s waste needs for about 100 years.

Rich Widrig, spokesman for Torrance-based Western Waste Industries, which is proposing a waste-by-rail project in Imperial County called InteRail, said the company is aware that ECDC is putting on a big marketing push now.

"We're not concerned with their push to sign up cities at all," Widrig said. However, he admitted that the first mega-landfill to become operational would have an advantage over the others.

Ultimately, only two of the projects, which cost about $100 million to build, will see daylight, Widrig conceded.

He said the California projects have "a leg up" on the Utah project because there is currently political movement afoot in Congress and in several state legislatures to outlaw the transportation of garbage across state lines.

But Noble of ECDC said a Utah landfill has an advantage over a California dump because it can take industrial waste and dispose of it cheaper. The reason: California has more stringent waste laws and what is hazardous waste in California is only designated as industrial waste in Utah.

A number of Los Angeles area businesses, including L.A.-based Inland Container Corp., have already hired ECDC to dispose of industrial waste, Noble said. The company is talking to major oil companies with refineries in the L.A. basin about future contracts, he added.

The company has been "stepping up our efforts" to get big waste contracts from cities and counties across the state since a Union Pacific subsidiary exercised its right to buy majority interest in the company, Noble said.

In January, USPCI, a Union Pacific waste company, exercised its right to buy a 60 percent stake in ECDC, Noble said.

ECDC is in the process of writing a proposal for a contract for Napa County's trash and is pitching dozens of cities in Northern and Southern California, Noble said. "We're offering 20 year contracts," he said.

It costs about $60 to $65 a ton to tote garbage to Utah and dump it there, he said. In L.A. County currently, it costs about $15 a ton to dump trash in a publicly owned landfill and $30 a ton to dump it in a privately owned landfill.