When county supervisors signed off on an $88 million project to help expand the capacity of the Prima Deshecha landfill in 2023, Supervisor Katrina Foley praised the plan, saying it would open doors for the trash depot to serve her residents for decades to come.
“This is an important item so that we can continue to provide landfill services in south county,” Foley said at the board’s Sept. 26, 2023 meeting. “Also appreciate OC Waste and Recycling’s efforts to make it as environmentally friendly as possible. With that, I’ll move the item.”
In a press release after the meeting, she also praised the project.
“This project will protect our water shed by building a liner that extends capacity at Prima Deshecha,” Foley wrote. “This investment will serve many future generations.”
But after residents got a whiff of the true scope of the landfill’s expansion earlier this year when county staff floated plans to possibly double the amount of trash going to the landfill daily, hundreds of complaints started coming in to Foley.
[Read: South OC Residents Protest Plans To Double Trash Capacity At Local Landfill]
She quickly called a meeting with the County CEO and other department heads, directing county staff to shut down a public meeting talking about doubling the amount of trash allowed to go to the landfill on a daily basis.
“Our office was not informed that this was being done by (OC) Waste and Recycling, and I learned about this from all the residents starting to email me,” Foley said in an interview on Feb. 6. “I have challenged them to do a better job at looking at the landfill as something we’re trying to decrease, not increase.”
Now, Republican leaders are saying they want to know more about Foley’s role in the landfill’s development, releasing a statement on Wednesday night highlighting Foley’s position on both votes.
“Sure seems like the public should know the discussions between Foley and the CEO and OC Waste department head,” said Will O’Neill, chair of the Orange County Republican Party, in a text to Voice of OC. “If it takes outside investigators, then bring them in.”
Voice of OC has already filed public records requests under state law seeking Foley’s communications around the landfill as well as internal communications with OC Waste and Recycling officials about how the project developed, which have not yet been released to the public.
Foley said the GOP statement was just a political attack on her in the middle of her reelection campaign, where Republican Assemblywoman Diane Dixon has been fundraising to run for that seat despite having not yet filed papers to run.
“They are misleading the public for political reasons,” Foley said in a Thursday interview. “This is just politics, that’s all it is.”
Foley argued the expansion of the landfill in 2023 and proposals around increasing how much waste goes to the landfill this year are two totally separate projects, and that the construction contract she greenlit was to pave the way for a landfill expansion approved long before she joined the board.
“That’s a multi-million dollar project that’s already started. What can I do about that?” Foley said. “It’s well underway. It’s something that was approved by the board of supervisors and city for decades, nothing to do with me. I’m just voting to approve a contract for something that was already approved long before I got to the county,” referring to her 2023 vote.
Francine Bangert, a spokesperson for OC Waste and Recycling, said in a Thursday statement that while the landfill was originally approved to expand in 2001, the groundbreaking didn’t come until 2023.
“The 2023 approval referenced above with Sukut Construction was to initiate Zone 4 development for waste disposal,” Bangert wrote.
Zone 4 is the other half of the landfill currently under construction that will serve as the primary dumping ground through the end of the century.
That excavation was the first step to expand the landfill according to a 2023 county staff report, clearing 65 acres of land and seven million cubic yards of dirt and rock to guarantee the landfill would last beyond the end of the century.
“The Project will provide continued disposal services for the County and increase disposal capacity and operational efficiencies,” staff wrote. “Development of Zone 4 of the Prima Landfill is a necessarily included component of the Project.”
Foley says her primary issue is with the proposal to double the amount of trash allowed to go to the landfill every day, not the overall size of the landfill.
“Why are we adding more trash? We already had a plan. That is what I am disagreeing on. I don’t want us to add more trash,” Foley said.
While debate around the dump is reaching a boiling point, residents next door have been complaining about the noise and poor air quality from construction to expand the landfill since 2023.
A Voice of OC public records request found dozens of complaints that went to the county about the landfill’s operations in 2023 and 2024.
“The dust is crazy in our community from the explosions going on at the expansion,” wrote one San Juan Capistrano resident. “I have lived in this community for eight years and NEVER experienced anything like this.”
“My nose won’t stop running and I can’t stop sneezing,” said another resident. “I can’t sleep because the sneezing is non stop and our air quality is absolutely terrible. My whole family is sneezing non stop. This is unacceptable.”
This week, one public commenter at the board of supervisors meeting also highlighted that there’s lots of young kids at a public high school – San Juan Hills High – near the landfill.
While Foley said the acreage expansion of the landfill was something she could not stop because it was approved in the early 2000s, there are mounting questions about how she was able to announce a pause in the effort to increase how much trash goes to the dump on a daily basis on her own – based on her interaction with county staff.
The OC Republican Party and Foley’s Republican colleagues on the board of supervisors Don Wagner and Janet Nguyen also brought up complaints around Foley’s meeting privately with staff to halt the project, which Foley defended.
“I’m doing my job. That’s my job. It’s the same job Don Wagner does when there’s a fire in his district. It’s the same job that Janet does when there is some kind of controversy in her district,” Foley said. “If there’s an issue in our district, we reach out to the CEO to understand what’s going on. That is absolutely a component of our job.”
She also accused them of attempting to mislead the public for political purposes.
“I did my job exactly how I’m supposed to. If they don’t like the way I did it, their remedy is to put an item on the agenda and to vote on it,” Foley said. “They’re just trying to mislead the public.”
Foley also noted she has not yet met with OC Waste and Recycling staff to talk about the issue of the landfill.
“We need the time to review the documentation. Many current deadlines with competing priorities,” Foley said in a Thursday morning text. “This is not a rush.”
Bangert also noted the department is “ensuring there is better communication with the Board of Supervisors and members of the public related to matters going forward.”
There was a public hearing scheduled for March on the landfill efforts at Prima Descheca but it was canceled at Foley’s request to allow for more members of the public to send in comments.
Noah Biesiada is a Voice of OC reporter. Contact him at nbiesiada@voiceofoc.org.