Site History
At the beginning
Redwood Landfill opened in 1958, operated by Jordan Smith, whose family has been in Marin for generations. Smith Ranch Road is named for them. Smith purchased the land for Redwood Landfill from another long-time Marin family, the Silveira family, and received a County use permit to establish and operate a landfill on the 600-acre parcel.
Typical of the era, there were no conditions attached to the permit regarding capacity or traffic. In fact, fill operations were common around the Bay at that time. This was still a time when creating a "dump" was considered a beneficial use of unusable bay lands, which were diked and dried for this use. Refuse companies and individuals brought in various materials such as dirt, garbage, old wood, and concrete, and dump operators spread the fill and covered it with dirt.
In 1970, Redwood started accepting sludge from San Francisco, San Mateo and EBMUD. This peaked at 180,000 tons per year in the 1990s before Redwood started phasing out air drying of sludge due to the odor concerns. Redwood now has reduced its sludge intake by 90 percent, of which the majority is mixed with wood waste and reused as the cover layer spread over new waste each day.
First permits
When the California Integrated Waste Management Board was created in 1978, Redwood received its first state permit, a Solid Waste Facility Permit, to take in sludge and solid waste.
In 1989, stringent new state and federal regulations went into effect, and Smith decided to sell rather than make new investments to meet new regulatory standards. Sanifill bought Redwood in 1991 and soon afterward, Sanifill was purchased by USA Waste of California. USA Waste and Waste Management merged in 1998 and retained the name Waste Management.
In 1989 Waste Management worked closely with then Assembly Member Byron Sher to pass AB 939, the nation's first mandatory recycling law. As recycling grew and waste management practices changed, Redwood was a leader in helping Marin comply with new state recycling mandates by recycling fill material under temporary permits starting in 1994. First, Redwood began to recycle some of the soil it received, using it for cover and various construction projects instead of excavating new soil from the nearby quarry. Then Redwood started using green waste for erosion control and a combination of green waste and sludge mixed together as an alternative cover. At the same time Redwood added a composting facility and started diverting concrete and asphalt to be ground up for base rock and gravel. In 1996, Redwood started diverting metals and appliances from self-haulers for recycling rather than for disposal in the landfill. Today Redwood recycles 50 percent of the material it receives from Marin homes and businesses each day and accounts for 33 percent of all the recycling that takes place in Marin County.
Reclaimed wetlands
In 2003, Redwood and the Marin Audubon Society worked together to recreate wetlands in a part of the landfill site that was originally slated to become part of the landfill. Redwood transferred ownership of 180 acres of diked baylands property to the Audubon Society to facilitate this process.. The group then restored the land back to tidal wetlands and opened the levees to the Bay in 2006. The Audubon Society has a permanent easement across Redwood's property to access and manage the property with the goal of turning the area over to the California Department of Fish and Game in the long term.
Traffic Safety
As traffic in the North Bay worsened, the trucks and cars crossing Highway 101 to access Redwood became a greater traffic hazard. To address this issue, Redwood designed and paid for a $10 million bridge over the highway to improved traffic safety. The new bridge opened in 2006. Redwood plans to transfer ownership of the bridge to the state at no cost if it is incorporated into Caltrans' future improvement plans of the highway. The bridge design also can accommodate potential future widening of the highway.