Two weeks ago, Agromin, the organic recycling division of Harrison Industries, won the top prize of $10 million in a competitive grant process offered through the California Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery, CalRecycle. The funding will support a major step forward in recycling in Ventura County and will partially fund the development of a commercial-scale composting operation at Limoneira Farms near Santa Paula.
Limoneira’s project received a conditional use permit from the Ventura County Board of Supervisors in February 2022, but conditions of the approved site plan and permit include extensive new infrastructure that would take time and money to construct. It is included. Construction of new roads, water collection and treatment systems, and six buildings is expected to cost Agromin $30 million by the time the new operation begins. Additional funding may come in the form of loans from the Ventura County Recycling Market Development District, banks supported by the California Pollution Prevention Finance Agency, and additional private partners.
The development of this new compost facility will solve a local problem. Food scraps from most Ventura County homes and businesses participating in the organic recycling program are now separated from yard clippings and trucked to Kern County for recycling. Ventura County does not have a local facility licensed to compost food waste, so reaping the environmental benefits of composting food waste required this long journey with environmental costs.
Senate Bill 1383 in 2016 required California to repurpose its food recycling program, but jurisdictions such as Ventura County cannot receive exemptions or deadline extensions simply because local facilities are not ready. could not. Far from being sympathetic to the situation of communities that do not have existing facilities permitted to compost food residues, proponents of this mandate argue that communities forced to implement food recycling programs are less likely to have access to materials. He predicted that there would be a rush to build and develop new facilities to avoid export costs.
Agromin’s project in Limoneira has been in the planning and permitting stage since 2010, and at the time of its proposal some thought it was unlikely to advance through permitting. Ventura County’s zoning ordinance prohibits commercial composting on agricultural land and only allows farm-based composting, with restrictions such as requiring all compost and mulch produced to be used on-site. has been done. In February 2022, the Board of Supervisors lifted this zoning restriction for up to 200 acres countywide. Agromin’s expansion will allow the Limoneira site to accept food waste within two years, expanding the current 15-acre farm operation into a 70-acre commercial-scale composting facility.
In addition to the lack of local composting opportunities for food scraps, Ventura County also lacks the capacity to process other waste that would be considered “organic” or compostable. Even after Agromin’s new project expands Limoneira’s production capacity to nearly 300,000 tons per year, all local organics recycling facilities combined will not be able to process all of the county’s organic waste that the state requires recycling. is likely to be insufficient.
To partially address this need, Agromin plans to open its Mountain View food waste processing facility in Oxnard in 2024. The facility will be able to crush more than 100,000 tons of household and commercial food waste per year and send it elsewhere for reuse. It can also be used as animal feed, bioenergy or compost. However, some of this inflow total may be due to commercial loads in some of the adjoining counties. Making animal feed requires carefully selected raw materials, but household food waste is all too unpredictable. Although this facility will add some capacity to the area, it will also require new composting capacity, as material collected there but not suitable for animal feed will need to be transferred.
You can help by recycling organic materials properly. In areas where Harrison & Waste Management transports, please bag your household food scraps so that materials can be separated for proper disposal. In areas where Athens transports, place paper soiled with food scraps and 100% fiber-based food directly into the organic cart or use clear bags. In either case, keep organic materials away from the landfill to prevent contamination from methane gas, which is produced as organic materials rot in the landfill without oxygen. Methane has far greater climate change potential than carbon caused by emissions such as truck exhaust, and Agromin’s development of a new composting facility in Limoneira will reduce both types of pollution. It will be.
David Goldstein is an environmental resources analyst for the Ventura County Public Works Agency and manages the Ventura County Recycling Market Development Zone. Contact him at 805-658-4312 or david.goldstein@ventura.org.