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Supervisor Parlin, as the appointee to the Rural County Representatives of California Environmental Services Joint Powers Authority, recommending the Board send a letter of support to Assembly Member Jim Wood for Assembly Bill 2902, regarding organic waste management.
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DISCUSSION / BACKGROUND
SB 1383 (Lara, Chapter 395) was passed in 2016 as part of California’s strategy to combat climate change. Organics like food scraps, yard trimmings, paper, and cardboard make up half of what Californians dump into landfills. This waste releases 20% of the state’s methane. SB 1383 requires jurisdictions to reduce landfill organic waste by 75% by 2025. CalRecycle estimates that these far-reaching SB 1383 regulations could cost as much as $40 billion to implement over a ten-year period and will require the construction of as many as 100 new organic waste recycling facilities
El Dorado County is a member of the Rural County Representatives of California (RCRC) Environmental Services Joint Powers Authority (ESJPA). As a member county, El Dorado has been participating in the ESJPA’s efforts to right-size and gain flexibility in implementing SB 1383, which has been burdensome and costly to many of the RCRC ESJPA member counties. The ESJPA reached out to Assembly Member Jim Wood, who has sponsored and introduced Assembly Bill 2902.
The key components of AB 2902 that would affect El Dorado County would include:
· Provide additional flexibility for 12 smaller counties to propose an alternative or modified organic waste diversion and recycling program for CalRecycle’s approval.
· This applies to unincorporated portions of El Dorado, Humboldt, Imperial, Kings, Mendocino, Madera, Napa, Nevada, Shasta, Yuba, Sutter, and Yolo Counties but excludes census-designated places with a population greater than 10,000 residents.
· This provision is intended to recognize the efforts of those jurisdictions to divert agricultural and forest-derived organic waste...
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