Agenda

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TRANSPORTATION, WATER & INFRASTRUCTURE COMMITTEE

Meeting Date:	03/06/2014
Department:	Public Works
Referral No.:	5
Referral Name:	RECEIVE report from the County Watershed Program on the Long Term Trash Management Plan
Presenter:	Cece Sellgren, Stormwater Manager	Contact:	Cece Sellgren (925) 313-2296, csell@pw.ccounty.us

Information

Referral History:

Contra Costa County was required to submit a short term trash reduction plan under the municipal NPDES permit from the San Francisco Water Board. The County Watershed Program prepared a short term trash plan and submitted it on February 1, 2012. The plan relied heavily on development of ordinances to prohibit the distribution of single use plastic bags and foam polystyrene food and beverage containers to meet the 40% short term requirement. The short term plan was not submitted to TWIC prior to submittal due to lack of time.

When it became apparent that adoption of the two ordinances was not feasible within the time frame of the short term plan, the County Watershed Program prepared a revised plan to meet the 40% requirement. The revised short term plan relied heavily on using a contractor to clean-up trash on County road right of way. TWIC requested more information on the costs of the proposed plan before approving its submittal. County Watershed Program staff were unable to develop costs for the proposed short term plan due to other unexpected NPDES priorities.

Referral Update:

The County was required to submit by February 1, 2014 a Long Term Trash Management Plan to achieve a 70% reduction by 2017 and a 100% reduction by 2022. Because of the complexity the County and diversity of the unincorporated communities, the County Watershed Program developed 17 separate community trash plans to meet the 70% and 100% requirement. The entire Long Term Contra Costa County Trash Management Plan was 268 pages. The County Watershed Program had very little time to map the trash rates, map trash management areas, and develop trash reduction strategies to lay-out in the plan. The County Watershed Program was unable to obtain approval from TWIC prior to submittal on February 1, 2014. The discussion before this TWIC meeting is designed to brief the Committee on the process undertaken so far and propose a further process to obtain input from the communities, determine the costs of trash reduction strategies, and develop a Long Term Trash Management Plan that will meet regulatory requirements and the County can afford to implement.

Recommendation(s)/Next Step(s):

APPROVE proposed process to evaluate costs and obtain community input to revise draft Community Trash Plans.

Fiscal Impact (if any):

Unknown

Attachments
Long Term Trash Management Plan