After hundreds of South Orange County residents contacted their county supervisor, Katrina Foley, asking why the county was doubling trash going into the Prima Deshecha landfill, she publicly declared the action was a surprise to her.
“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 during a February interview with Voice of OC. “I have challenged them to do a better job at looking at the landfill as something we’re trying to decrease, not increase.”
In addition to the interview, Foley also publicly denied that she knew anything about the expansion, publicly calling out OC Waste and Recycling Director Tom Koutroulis and noting he never spoke to her about it earlier this year.
“Despite Mr. Koutroulis’ comment about ‘it was insufficient’ implying there was some kind of briefing to the board, there was no briefing,” Foley said at the board’s Feb. 10 meeting. “There was no information.”
But a Voice of OC review of internal communications between Foley and county staff found Foley was indeed briefed about the expansion years earlier, with multiple emails between her and some of the county’s top waste and recycling staff about the issue.
Foley said the emails she received from staff previously about the issue did not qualify as a briefing, saying she received thousands of emails over her tenure as a supervisor and did not recall it.
“As the new Fifth District Supervisor in 2023, and someone who had never before represented an area with landfills, I did not yet have a full understanding of how this issue was developing,” Foley wrote in a Tuesday evening statement.
She noted that in 18 other meetings with OC Waste and Recycling staff over the last three years, no one ever mentioned the landfill expansion plans again.
“I oppose expanding our landfills. We must reduce waste. No review of emails from three years ago changes my position,” Foley wrote. “I did not recall the October 2023 email thread at the time. Regardless, my position is clear. I oppose the expansion of daily tonnage and will continue to advocate against it.”
Residents Raised Red Flags Years Ago
Public concerns center around county plans to double the daily ceiling for trash going into the Prima Deshecha landfill near San Juan Capistrano, Rancho Mission Viejo and San Clemente, which county staff have asked to move from 4,000 to 8,000 tons a day.
The increase is part of county officials’ plans to deal with the planned closure of the Olinda Alpha Landfill in Brea, which will begin sending trash to other sites.
The earliest email released by county staff in response to a Voice of OC records request came from a Rancho Mission Viejo resident nearly three years ago, on Oct. 3 2023, flagging concerns that the increase in trash going to the landfill would back up traffic on Ortega Highway.
“I am concerned that the Prima Deshecha landfill is going to increase its daily fill capacity from 4000 tons to 8000 tons,” they wrote. “Earlier this year, you met with the residents of Reata Glen and promised to work on a traffic mitigation plan.”
“We expect you to keep your promise and not approve the additional fill rate until a mitigation plan is in effect.”
Foley forwarded that email to Koutroulis that night, according to records.
“Can we get an update on the timing of these projects?” she asked.
By the afternoon of Oct. 4, less than 24 hours after they asked about the shift, Koutroulis sent Foley an email walking her through the expansion, including an outline of the county’s plans to shutter the county’s Brea landfill and increase their dumping rate at Prima Deshecha.
“I am following up on my email this morning, providing more background and information regarding the upcoming Subsequent Environmental Impact Report (SEIR) process for increased tonnage at Prima Deshecha Landfill,” Koutroulis wrote to Foley. “We have planned for this shift in tonnage capacity.”
On Oct. 17 2023, Foley received another email from a different constituent raising the same concern.
“I know you are familiar with the Ortega traffic problem as it exists but this proposed expansion of the dump can only make it dramatically worse and seems to come from people with insufficient knowledge or concern about the situation,” they wrote. “You don’t need to respond to me but I hope that you will be actively involved.”
Foley forwarded that email to Koutroulis again.
“Thank you Supervisor, I will see if this can be added to the comments,” Koutroulis wrote.
“More importantly, I need a response please,” Foley replied.
OC Waste and Recycling staff then circulated a draft for a page-long response to the resident’s complaint, thanking them for their concerns and offering a tour of the landfill that would be sent out by the supervisor’s office.
“Let me send the response to the supervisor for her consideration,” Koutroulis wrote in a message to multiple staff members on Oct. 17 2023.
It’s unclear from the records released if that draft was ever provided to Foley’s office, with county records staff noting they’re still preparing more emails to be released publicly.
Waste and Recycling Staff Tried to Notify Supervisor of Expansion Plans
After the 2023 emails, there were no more messages directly between OC Waste and Foley on the issue, according to the latest batch of email communication released by the county in response to public records requests by Voice of OC.
OC Public Works staff continued working on the proposal to expand the capacity over the next several years.
Yet according to records reviewed, in the fall of 2025, OC Waste and Recycling began making efforts to notify Foley about the project again.
“We need to ensure that the City Managers for San Juan Capistrano and San Clemente, as well as D5 and CEO, have been updated on the upcoming mailing and meeting,” wrote Francine Bangert, the department spokesperson, in a message to OC Waste and Recycling staff in Oct. 2025.
Foley is the representative for the county’s fifth district, referred to in this case by staff as D5.
In a separate email, a deputy director at OC Waste and Recycling, Lisa Smith, noted they were pushing back several deadlines to get more input from Foley’s office.
“Team, we would like to push the public meetings…assuming this gives us a few more days to have discussions with both cities and 5thD,” Smith wrote in an email to her colleagues on Nov. 20 2025.
She reiterated that point in a subsequent email.
“To clarify, we want everything to wait until we can speak with both cities and 5thD, public meeting and public release,” Smith wrote. “We think we can reach them in the next few days.”
On Nov. 21, she confirmed in an email to Koutroulis that several meeting dates had been pushed back and that they would be reaching out again to Foley’s office.
“Hi Tom – I met with the team re:Prima,” Smith wrote. “Please confirm if you agree with these changes…Monday we will contact 5th.”
Foley denied that any of those briefings took place in a text to Voice of OC late Tuesday, saying she still has not yet received a full briefing on the issue but that she has toured the landfill and learned more.
“It’s the only time since I’ve been a county supervisor where there was a big project in the district I represent where I didn’t get a formal briefing,” Foley said in a Tuesday evening interview.
She noted she’s waiting on a full briefing because she wants staff to have time to review the complaints from the public about the project, and that she’s waiting on them to go through those.
Foley Denied Any Knowledge of the Project After Backlash
Despite numerous messages between OC Waste and Recycling staff speaking on the importance of getting Foley’s input, it’s unclear from the released records if she was contacted again in 2025.
The written records do not include any possible phone calls or in person conversations.
In past interviews and publicly, Foley claims she never heard from OC Waste and Recycling about the project until residents started complaining, and questioned why the county is trying to dump more trash there.
“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 in a February interview.
But county leaders have been planning an expansion of the landfill’s daily capacity for years, along with their current construction project to expand the total size of the landfill and guarantee it continues receiving trash beyond the end of the century.
Foley’s currently running for reelection and faced questions from the head of the county Republican Party about how she could vote in favor to expand the size of the landfill and then try to vote down proposals to expand the amount of trash that goes in on a daily basis.
[Read: Expansion of County Landfill Turns Into Hot Button Campaign Issue]
At the time, Foley said it was an effort to politicize the information, and that plans to expand the footprint of the landfill were approved long before she came into office.
“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.”
Foley reiterated that she had never “flip-flopped” on the project on Tuesday, saying that after her review of the issue she was firmly opposed to the plans to increase trash going to the landfill every day.
“That increase is not necessary when the landfill has not even reached its current permitted capacity of 4,000 tons per day and is currently receiving about 2,000 tons per day,” Foley wrote.
It remains unclear how long that number will remain low, with county staff noting in emails with one another that the new ceiling of 8,000 tons per day could be hit before the end of the decade if it’s approved.
Hany Ahmed, a deputy director with OC Waste and Recycling, noted in an Oct. 29 2025 email to his colleagues, including Koutroulis, that they could reach the 8,000 tons per day limit before 2030.
“I made a comment in the last SEIR update meeting regarding reaching 8,000 tpd (tons per day) by 2030. This info is not supported by any data, and I requested rewording the statement and omitting the year 2030,” he wrote. “Let’s not commit to 8,000 tpd by 2030, as we may reach that tonnage before 2030.”
Noah Biesiada is a Voice of OC reporter. Contact him at nbiesiada@voiceofoc.org.