Respectable Governor Brown, State Assembly Member Kansen Chu,  State Senator Bob Wieckowski, City of San Jose Mayor, Sam Liccardo, Council member of SJ D1, Charles Jones, D2, Ash kalra,  D3, Raul Peralez, D4, Manh Nguyen, D5, Magdalena Carrasco, D6, Pierluji Oliverio, D7, Tam Nguyen,  D8, Vice Mayor Rose Herrera, D9, Donald Rocha, and D10, Johnny Khamis,

Some residents in Milpitas, Fremont, Santa Clara, and Newark think that the officials of San Jose are going to sacrifice our quality of life by approving the Newby Island Landfill expansion.  Is it true? I was treating it as a rumor. On May 31st I saw one article from Mercury News that shocked me:

Instead of using the Guadalupe landfill, Sodergeren said, there’s no reason why the Newby Island dump can’t continue to collect Milpitas' garbage.

“We do have an issue right now that I believe would fix this problem,” he said. “We have another landfill, Newby Island, which was serving the garbage from Milpitas and is still servicing it until September of 2017, but it needs a permit to be able to continue to service Milpitas’ garbage under a 20-year contract because it will tap out in six years”.

Mr. Johnny Khamis, you know your opponent is trying to use this undeliverable promise as his weapon to attack you and grab your seat as his own!   I believe you can find a better way to solve the problem and secure your seat, even though it may not be easy but it is definitely under the scope of your ability and will make all South Bay residents happy, including all residents around Newby Island landfill. How?

The council members of San Jose can come together to pass a city ordinance mandating all urban landfills must have a 2 mile buffer zone or move out of urban areas.

People may question that if we move out all urban landfills from San Jose (Newby Island landfill, Zanker Landfill, and Guadalupe landfill), where will the garbage go?  The answer is Altamont landfill in Livermore. This landfill has existing facilities for burning garbage to create energy; therefore, the landfill will not have a capacity problem of accepting all south bay cities’ garbage.

We were told that if the Newby landfill gets closed, all south bay garbage will be dumped at Guadalupe Landfill because there are no other landfills around and our garbage bill will be much higher than the current garbage rate.  This is not true.

In 2008, Tri Cities Landfill in Fremont was shut down and transferred its garbage to Altamont Landfill in Livermore.  Fremont garbage rate stayed as low as $30.51; that was slightly lower than San Jose’s $30.84. Garbage from San Jose dumps to Newby Landfill that is much closer than the Altamont Landfill where garbage from Fremont goes.  Cupertino garbage goes to Newby and its rate is $23.40 which is much lower than Milpitas’ garbage rate of $27.85. The same as San Jose and Fremont, Milpitas is much closer to the landfill than Cupertino. The conclusion can be drawn that there is no correlation between the distance of transferring garbage to a landfill and the rates of service. Meanwhile, residents in San Jose host three garbage landfills but the garbage rate in San Jose is pretty high.

So, there is no capacity problem with landfills to deposit south bay cities garbage, and there is also no problem with a garbage rate hike. The problem will be the priority order in San Jose officials’ mind: residents or landfill revenue. If they prioritize residents over revenue, they will propose a bill and pass it in as quick as a few months; if they choose revenue over residents, they will tell you that we have no power to shut down the Guadalupe landfill! They will tell you to support Newby Island landfill expansion, so Milpitas garbage won’t be dumped at Guadalupe! They will tell you that the landfill has no negative impacts nor generates foul odor or even hire experts to do an odor study with an outcome to blame the odor on the ocean and the marsh or other odor sources!

They will never tell you that council members in San Jose have an absolute authority to propose and pass an ordinance to move out all urban landfills within its boundary!

We need to vote against all officials who are favoring the urban landfills without setting a safe buffer zone from residential areas since an urban landfill certainly hurts people’s quality of life, most likely impacts people’s health, and surely pollutes people’s air, water, and soil. The foul air pollution maybe can be ignored or tolerated for some, but the water and soil contamination are more dangerous and with far more reaching negative impacts that no humans can simply ignore or tolerate.

Stop favoring urban landfills; move out all urban landfills from San Jose! Silicon Valley residents deserve clean air, water, and soil!

San Jose council members, please create an ordinance to move out all urban landfills from San Jose!