After Spending Nearly a Half-Billion Dollars, the LA County, CA ŒTrash Train¹ Will Not Leave the Station for Another 10 Years

But the crisis never materialized: Literally and metaphorically, no train has ever left the station. A reduction in municipal waste tonnage from increased recycling, combined with a plethora of nearby landfills with decades of remaining space, have made an empty remote landfill at the end of the line unnecessary, placing the Sanitation Districts of Los Angeles County’s expensive trash train project on hold indefinitely.

Also known as waste-by-rail, the trash train will not leave the San Gabriel Valley for the desert — or anywhere else for that matter — until at least 2027, and maybe even later, said Chuck Boehmke, head of the districts’ solid waste management department, during a recent interview from the Districts’ North Whittier headquarters.

The Districts recently extended its lease with the Orange County Waste & Recycling Department, which will receive Los Angeles County’s trash at two of its landfills until 2025. It would take another two years to ramp up the train, Boehmke said, adding that extending the OC lease is possible.

$440 million spent on project
Since 1987, the Districts’ have spent $440 million buying and establishing a remote landfill in the desert, the Mesquite Regional Landfill — 113 miles east of San Diego and 220 miles south of City of Industry in Imperial County — and acquiring land for new material recovery facilities, one at Puente Hills and the other in Downey. The agency also built a rail yard at Mesquite that can offload rail cars onto giant dump trucks that would deposit loads of trash into the mega landfill.

A second rail facility, finished in 2016, was built in the City of Industry, and the two rail yards bookend 220 miles of tracks stretching from Industry to Mesquite.

The remote landfill, established in 2012, has never received an ounce of trash in five years. The two rail yards have never been used. Annual maintenance costs of about $600,000 for both ends of the waste-by-rail project — not included in the capital costs — are adding up quickly. The Districts are desperately trying to find alternative uses for the facilities.

The Sanitation Districts hired a brokerage firm to attract tenants to offset the standing costs of the mothballed project, Boehmke said.

On Jan. 10, the Districts’ board of directors will most likely approve a plan to rent out the Mesquite rail yard to an agricultural entity to haul as many as 230,000 tons of hay per year from nearby farms to the rail yard, where a 24-hour operation will load the hay onto rail container cars for the 220-mile ride to the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles for shipment overseas, according to a report obtained by this newspaper through a public records request. In a second phase, the tonnage of hay would double.

The change in the permit was approved Dec. 12 by the Imperial County Board of Supervisors.

Boehme said a tenant, most likely a third party working with Imperial County farmers, has already signed on. He would not say how much the district will receive. That lease agreement also comes to a vote Jan. 10, he said and has not been made available to the public.

“We can lease the rail yards out to companies that want to use them to ship commodities” (other than trash), he explained. “Our hope is to get sufficient revenue to maintain our facilities.”

Meanwhile, the rail facility in Industry, located on 17 acres at 2500 Pellissier Place, has been sitting vacant for nearly two years. To offset its $100,000 in yearly maintenance costs, the Districts are renting the parking lots to an automobile distributor. Last week, the lots were filled with hundreds of brand new Nissan cars, their wheels still wrapped in cardboard. Car carriers truck the automobiles for distribution to dealerships daily, he said.

“It is a car transportation company that works with car dealerships and moves the new cars that are only stored there for short periods of time,” he said.