The Cost of Regulating Active Landfills for Water Quality

This report to the legislature was prepared pursuant to Chapter 718, Statutes of 2010 (SB 855, Committee on Budget and Fiscal Review), which requires the State Water Resources Control Board (State Water Board) to submit to the budget committees in each house of the legislature a report on the costs of regulating water quality at active landfills. The State Water Board and Regional Water Quality Control Boards (Regional Boards, collectively, the Water Boards) analyzed the cost of resources required to implement State and Federal statutes, regulations, and policies at these facilities. This report provides an overview of the Water Boards’ Land Disposal Program, followed by a cost analysis.

The Water Boards’ Land Disposal Program provides regulatory oversight to 439 active landfills and 235 other waste management facilities in the State. Active landfills are all landfills that still pose a threat to the environment, even if they have stopped accepting waste. Active landfills are classified as operating or non-operating, with non-operating landfills including proposed, closing, and closed landfills.

There are an estimated 1600 legacy landfills that were not included in the cost analysis for this report. Legacy landfills are waste management units that were closed, abandoned, or inactive prior to the adoption of revised State Water Board regulations in November 1984.

In response to the legislative requirements, the results of this analysis show the cost of regulating the 439 active landfills to be approximately $18.1 million. The Land Disposal Program also regulates other waste management facilities as an integral part of the program, and tracks these facilities along with active landfills. Based on this analysis, the cost of regulating the 235 other waste management facilities is approximately $7.6 million. In total, implementation of the Land Disposal Program would cost approximately $25.7 million (not including legacy landfills).

In Fiscal Year 2011-2012, the total expenditures incurred by the Land Disposal Program were approximately $10.6 million. As this presents an approximately $15.2 million shortfall in funding, the program prioritizes work based on threat to water quality, complexity, and level of activity at the facility.

Working within existing resource constraints, the Land Disposal Program is currently implementing a series of efficiency measures to improve program effectiveness. A discussion of these efforts concludes this report.