Waste Management - GI Industries - Keeping Our Communities Clean

Waste Management, combined with its wholly owned subsidiary Recycle America (WMRA), is North America’s largest recycler, recycling enough paper last year to save more than 41 million trees.

By recycling more than 57,000 tons of steel cans, WM reduces greenhouse gasses equivalent to taking more than 21,000 cars off the road each year.

Waste Management’s landfills provide more than 17,000 acres of protected habitat for wildlife, and 15 are certified by the Wildlife Habitat Council.

By processing 21 million pounds of e-scrap, WM keeps 313,000 monitors/TVs and 175,000 CPU hard drives from being disposed in landfills.

Update on Future Plans

At Waste Management, we value our relationship with the local community and have committed ourselves to ensuring that the review process for the expansion of the Simi Valley Landfill and Recycling Center is fair and transparent.

Our application falls under the guidelines of a state law passed almost 40 years ago: the California Environmental Quality Act or CEQA. This law requires local agencies to assess and detail the environmental impacts of projects before any construction or development can begin. CEQA is significant because it protects the interests of local residents by ironing out the details of the project and ensuring that all relevant issues have been clarified in advance.

The Ventura County Planning Department is charged with leading the CEQA process for the landfill expansion and they have requested additional information from us regarding our proposal. Technically, the CEQA process starts once a detailed project description and conditional use permit application have been deemed complete. We are in the process of responding to the County’s requests and are posting updates on our website.

Once the County has determined that the application is complete, the County will decide whether and how an Environmental Impact Report (EIR) should be prepared. Public meetings will be conducted by the County as part of the process to determine the scope of the EIR. WM has always expected and advocated for a full environmental review of the project. The initial draft EIR document is always circulated to the public.

Residents of Ventura County (and other interested parties) will be encouraged to read the document and provide comments and feedback - all of which will become part of the project’s public record. In addition, there will be multiple public meetings during which residents can weigh in on the project. Our commitment to the community is to support these discussions by providing all interested parties with access to all of the available information. We will post the EIR on our website and make it available at locations throughout the County.

Until then, we invite the public to visit us, to take a tour of the landfill, and to get as much background information as possible, so that when the EIR is complete, they can help us make this the very best project possible - and make it a project that meets the needs of all of Ventura County, as well as the community of Simi Valley.

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