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10/17/2006: "Self-Haul On SJ To Remain? New Transfer Station To Be Built?"

(SWAC, Consultants, PW, and the public meet again)

Final Recommendations on solid waste disposal on San Juan Island are ready to be presented to the County Council. The Findings and Recommendations from SWAC (San Juan County Solid Waste Advisory Committee) to the Council are laid out in five pages, and the recommendation includes "Self-hauling of both solid waste and recyclable materials".

When members of the public showed up for the fifth SWAC meeting on Monday, Oct 16th, that according to the agenda, was being held to finalize a set of "findings and recommendations" to the County Council "concerning solid waste management services on San Juan Island", some were surprised to find that a draft "Report to the San Juan County Council" had been previously made available to the committee, but not to the public.

After the start of the meeting, things did not improve for public participation. The public was informed early on that no public questions or comments were to be taken until the end of the meeting -that is to say, no input would be allowed on the draft, until all of the topics on the agenda had been covered by the committee. The surprise of learning the public process seemed to be over, turned to frustration and some subdued anger, when the committee reviewed the draft and then voted to accept it, without input from the public on the content of the draft.


Turns out that even some of the committee members were not fully advised as to what the public had previously had to say on the issues before them. Chair Mike Kaill informed the members that he had received emails from the public on the issue of self-haul, but since the email address on the County webpage was directed to him, he had not shared all of them with the committee.

At first blush this may all seem to be out of line with the published "Public Participation Plan", a plan that spelled out the importance of public involvement as being "essential to sound decision-making". But a close reading of the plan makes it clear that the formal part of the participation plan seemed to be expected to come to and end after the fourth SWAC meeting. In any case, that is the way it worked out.

After the Committee voted to accept the draft plan -with a few minor changes- a break was called, and one member of the public express his concern to the facilitator of the meeting, Todd Peterson (Todd is part of the consulting team from Norton-Arnold & Company, hired by Public Works to oversee and guide SWAC through the process of making a recommendation to the County Council), Mr. Peterson was told it made no sense to let the public make comments on the draft after the Committee had voted to approve it, and that he was not happy about taking off from work in the middle of day to come to the meeting, only to be informed the Committee would not allow input on a draft -that had not been made public- until after the Committee had discussed it, and voted to approve it as their final recommendation.

And what about those emails that did not see the light of day? When asked why he had not made them available to review, Kaill said that some of them were only a few sentences long, and anyway "I did not think all of them were of interest to the committee".

The approved Findings and Recommendations will now be sent to the County Council for their review, and prior to taking any action on them, the Council is expected to hold at least one public hearing. In the meantime, SWAC anticipates they will now take up the topic of "siting".

Will they decide to improve and expand the existing site, or will they suggest that the property Public Works purchased last year for a transfer station be a better choice? One thing is clear, given the existing land use codes, and the lack of available land designated for potential use as a transfer station, the choices may well be limited to the land under, and around the existing transfer station, or, use of the land purchased by the County for a new transfer station site.