The Board of Supervisors recently approved a batch of contracts, totaling about $285,000, that will pay companies to haul garbage out of county parks, move trash from transfer stations to dumps, pick up hazardous waste and truck it away, and hire consultants to make sure all the county landfills are meeting all applicable state and federal rules and regulations regarding dumps.
As usual in the modern world of garbage, the cleaner the hands, the bigger the check going into those hands. A consulting company will get about $192,900 to keep all the dump plans and progress reports up-to-date and in compliance with the tangle of dump rules.
The rest of the recently approved solid waste spending will go to actually handling garbage and moving it to where it should go.
The cost of the dump maneuvers will come from several sources.

The county Parks and Recreation Department will pick up the tab for taking the trash out of the county’s parks.
Bishop Waste Disposal will charge the county $11,424 to haul trash out of county parks and campgrounds  north of Independence (including Tinnemaha Campground, Taboose Campground, Mendenhall Park, Baker Creek Campground, Millpond Recreation Area, Pleasant Valley Campground and Laws Museum).
From Independence south, Bishop Waste will receive $11,786 to take care of the trash at Independence Park, Dehy Park, Diaz Lake, Portagee Joe’s and Lone Pine Park. The Parks and Recreation Department will pick up those costs.
More trash work in the southern portions of the county will also be handled by Bishop Waste Disposal, but the county’s Solid Waste Program will pay for the hauling. The county dumps are funded partially with gate fees and fees for certain types of garbage, charges paid by commercial waste haulers and the proceeds from a county-wide sales tax.
Bishop Waste Disposal will charge about $31,380 to haul away the refuse collected at the Olancha and Keeler transfer stations and deliver the garbage to the Lone Pine landfill.
The company will also be moving the garbage collected at the Big Pine Transfer Station to the Bishop Sunland Landfill, at a cost of $19,476.
Bishop Waste Disposal was the low bidder for all those jobs, beating out Preferred Septic & Disposal for the work.
Removing just household hazardous waste (paint, cleaning supplies, etc.) from the county’s landfills is a specialized job, and the low bidder for that task was 21st Century Emi of Nevada, located in … Benicia, Calif. The firm will provide the labor, equipment and materials to manage and move household hazardous waste from all the county’s dumps and transfer stations. It will cost the county $19,833 for that work, which must be completed based on rules and regulations issued by the Federal Department of Transportation, the Environmental Protection Agency and the site-specific plans for each dump and transfer station.
Speaking of plans and regulations, it will take plenty of money to re-hire the consulting firm that has been wading through dump regulations for the county for the past nine years.
Minshew Engineering will earn $192,900 for its services in the coming fiscal year.
The company, along with sub-contractor California Waste Associates, will continue to update and revise the specific operations plan for each county landfill and transfer station.
The firm will conduct groundwater monitoring and sampling at all closed (Tecopa and Shoshone) and operating landfills, and also install several new methane gas-monitoring probes and track any gases coming from the landfills.
The contract also calls for the company to work with the Solid Waste Department to ensure the county’s dumps meet all the state requirements for landfills. That includes operational rules and updating and completing extensive plans and permit applications and reviews.
It was noted that in the past nine years the firm has done the dump-related paperwork for the county, it has performed the mandated “scope of work” on time and under budget by various amounts each year.
The staff report noted that the county tried to handle all the environmental reporting, permit updates and other tasks being done by Minshew, and the result was no cost savings and numerous missed deadlines for mandatory compliance reports and other documents and documentation.