Right On Daily Blog

Do you want Northern Roseville – where Million-Dollar Homes are going up by the dozen to smell like sewage?

Lost in the shuffle of all this, is a newly approved development North of the Northern City Limit will be sandwiched in between the City Limit, the Right of Way for the Placer Parkway and the Athens Avenue Dump. If FCC gets the contract, that development will smell, Roseville North of Blue Oaks will smell and Anything anywhere near Fiddyment will be lit up making people think there is a Dairy in Modesto or Fresno City Hall near them.

You don’t believe me?

FCC uses a process that is outdated called the “Gore System”. Their process has proven to be a nuisance in multiple jurisdictions. WHY DO THE STAFF WANT TO BRING THIS TO ROSEVILLE???

Here is an article about an FCC composting technology (The “Gore System”) which is the EXACT SAME TECHNOLOGY as proposed for Placer County getting shut down by State of Delaware.

State environmental regulators have ordered the shutdown of an industrial scale composting plant near the Port of Wilmington that critics say produced a years-long siege of foul odors affecting tens of thousands.

Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control Secretary David Small said he would decline to re-issue a needed five-year “beneficial use” recycling determination for Peninsula Compost LLC’s Wilmington Organics Recycling Center along Christiana Avenue.

As of Tuesday, the company was prohibited from taking in new food or other organic wastes. Composting of materials on hand can continue until January, with all that remains afterward required to be removed by March.

“It’s disappointing, but it was clear that the facility was causing an undue burden on the communities in close proximity to the facility, the city of Wilmington and parts of New Castle County,” Small said.

I am wondering if the board need to bring in an independent auditor of the Staff to figure out where the due diligence went wrong.

That intent was soon knocked off track by unwanted materials in the center’s supply streams, operating troubles and a weak economy, among other factors. At one point, backlogged piles of compost caught fire and sent cloying smoke across the Port of Wilmington, briefly shutting it down.

Complaints about the plant’s distinctive odor surfaced in nearby disadvantaged neighborhoods, and eventually spread across the city, north to Brandywine Hundred and even across the Delaware River, to Pennsville, New Jersey.

But wait, there’s more:

The Delaware paper even made a map of locations where the FCC proposed technology plant was stinking up the large metropolitan area. Maybe FCC and their partner has set goals to emit their fragrance to Lincoln and Rocklin because Roseville is just not enough.

Another article on the same issue highlights Broken Down equipment at the facility as well.

Then don’t forget their partner’s the FCC disaster in Utah that we wrote about a few days ago:

“The problem that we have now is that we have stigma that it smells in American Fork and Pleasant Grove and therefore we are having a difficult time getting new tenants and some of our larger tenants, if we don’t fix this problem, they are not going to renew,” Robinson said.

The irony is that those suing the facility are also partners in it. But American Fork and Pleasant Grove cities say they can’t get the other municipalities to stop the composting, which they claim is costing them millions in lost tax revenue.

“When the wind blows or things smell, it moves right into Pleasant Grove and into American Fork, and that becomes our issue,” said Pleasant Grove City administrator Scott Darrington.

The facility operator said $16 million have been invested to improve the composting process, which helps to dispose of human waste.

The $425 million dollar lawsuit may just be an attention getter to stop the facility from composting on this site. The plaintiffs want the composting to be moved to a different location, or have the human waste hauled to the landfill.

Perhaps FCC is as naive as staff, since they chose a partner and technology that literally can’t handle their s–t.

Where is the staff of the district? Why did they ignore this easy-to-find information on FCC? Or, did they just want to go to Spain on a Junket? Someone, help your intrepid blogger out here – this really stinks.

But – the coup’d’etat is in Washington. Yes, the people’s Republic of Washington.

In 2009 – the Cedar Grove facility of FCC’s partner technology was stinking up Marysville and Everett Washington. The local Rags were complaining about it:

Officials at Cedar Grove Composting say it has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to get rid of the smell from its Smith Island plant and downwind residents should notice the difference once the warm weather starts.

Yard and food waste from throughout Snohomish County and North King County is trucked to the plant between Everett and Marysville, where it is turned into compost. Last summer, however, an odor from the plant began to overwhelm much of the area.

The Puget Sound Clean Air Agency ordered Cedar Grove to get rid of the stench. Company officials say they have taken a number of steps, including planting 500 trees to absorb odors and act as a windbreak.

You won’t be able to plant 500 trees at the Athens Road Dump.

Then there is this – Technology partner of FCC sued the City of Marysville for complaining about the smell!!!

Unlike many citizen activists, Davis does not play the role of a grouchy outsider. Marysville officials, including Mayor Jon Nehring, agree that the smell is insufferable, that Cedar Grove is the problem, and that regulators need to put a stop to it. But that’s not such an easy proposition, largely because Cedar Grove has consistently and aggressively denied that it is stinking up the region. In fact, the company has blamed a host of other entities for the problem, starting with its chief critic, the city of Marysville.

In August, Cedar Grove filed suit against the city, claiming that officials are withholding public records related to a “public-relations campaign aimed at spreading disinformation about Cedar Grove, including the false allegation that Cedar Grove was the primary source of odors in the Marysville area.” This alleged smear campaign, the suit claims, is aimed at diverting attention from the real stinker: the city’s own wastewater-treatment plant. The suit also names Davis as a pawn in this purported cover-up.

What a gem of a company. Why is the Staff of the Western Placer Waste Management Agency Rolling Out the Red Carpet for this racket??? Why would FCC partner with such bad actors, say’s a lot about a company.

The Composter who is using the same technology proposed for Placer County got Fined for the Nauseating Odors from it’s Everett Plant and Maple Valley Plant then of course appealed the fines!

When the smell is bad, she said, it’s like “somebody forcing your head over a garbage can of rotting, sweet food. … There were nights last summer when my husband and I were going, ‘Is there enough money in the bank to go stay at a hotel?’ “

One night, the stench forced her out of bed and into the bathroom, where she threw up, Avila says. One of her complaints to the Puget Sound Clean Air Agency led to an $11,000 fine when an inspector smelled the odor at her home and traced it back to Cedar Grove after ruling out other possible sources.

Yikes, coming to Roseville soon???

The company has appealed to King County Superior Court.

Since going into business next to King County’s Cedar Hills Landfill in 1989, Cedar Grove has struggled to control odors. And it has battled neighbors and regulators, saying it is being unfairly blamed for smells that come from other sources.

Since they have not been able to control the foul odors from their composting plants, it appears that composter’s solution was to invest in changing laws to try and escape the standards they have failed to reach. Note that in 2009 they sued Marysville and in 2012 got fined and appealed. The article about trying to change the law is from 2019. FCC’s partners technology has been stinking up Northern Washingtion since 1989 and appears to have not been able to get a handle on their operation in 30 years.

Yet, the staff of the Western Placer Waste Management Agency are asleep at the switch and have decided for reasons none of us will ever truly know to recommend FCC and their proven failure to Placer County!

OLYMPIA — A bill which would have buffered Cedar Grove from lawsuits arising from its composting operations is done for this year.

But the conversation among lawmakers is not over on how to promote the composting industry and protect communities’ legal options to combat noxious odors that it may produce.

“I think this bill is good policy,” said Rep. Amy Walen, D-Kirkland, the prime sponsor of the legislation. “We have a compelling need for composting. I just don’t think we want the parties to go to court all the time. I think we need to try to point them in a direction to work together.”

She vowed to seek avenues of compromise in the coming months and try again in 2020.

“We can’t go on this way,” she said.

House Bill 1167 sought to amend state law to treat composting as an agricultural activity entitled to protection from nuisance suits.

It cleared a House committee in early February but did not receive a vote in the chamber before a March 13 deadline for action on non-budget bills. A companion Senate bill never had a hearing.

Cedar Grove, a composting firm with a history of odor-related disputes in Snohomish and King counties, was behind the effort as it was with similar legislation that failed in 2017 and 2018.

Cedar Grove utilizes the same technology that FCC is partnering and promoting in Everett and Maple Valley that are owned by Cedar Grove.

The Western Placer Waste Management Authority is set to vote on Monday… on Monday we will have a nice summary for them and the rest of the readers of Right on Daily. Meantime, the Staff of the WPWMA failed miserably at their job.

Your intrepid blogger has been interested in the upcoming Placer County Waste / Trash / Dump contract. After exposing the attempts of the staff to give the current provider a no-bid 20 year contract for services – despite the mismanagement and substandard services they provided, it appears that the staff of the Western Placer Waste Management Authority are up to their tricks again. Fortunately, the level-headed WPWMA insisted staff put the contract out to bid. And it’s good thing they did – the current provider’s bid came in dead last when compared to others.

Undaunted by the previous exposure – they are trying to ram down a contract with a provider that has a history of screw ups, underbidding, fines, poor service and that is just some of what a google search reveals. Read on…

Then, a few days ago – this missile hit my text message threads.

A top Roseville wastewater official has been charged with five felony counts of diverting public funds to personal use, including two counts alleging he used money from the South Placer Wastewater Authority to pay for the moving expenses and law school tuition for a woman he arranged to have hired, The Sacramento Bee has learned.

Kenneth James Glotzbach, 54, Roseville’s assistant director of wastewater utilities and the executive director of the wastewater authority, was charged in Superior Court on Nov. 8 by Placer County District Attorney Morgan Gire’s office and an arrest warrant was issued, court files say. He was arrested at his Carmichael home Friday and booked into the South Placer Jail before being released on $20,000 bail, Roseville police spokesman Rob Baquera said.

Glotzbach is accused of arranging to hire Marisa Tricas, a 32-year-old U.S. Environmental Protection Agency worker he met at a conference, without permission from the city and eventually of having her hired in 2018 by a consulting firm paid with city, county and utility funds, court records say.

He allegedly arranged for more than $300,000 in public funds to be used to pay Tricas, funded her moving expenses from Washington, D.C., by putting them on his city credit card and had the city pay for her tuition at Lincoln Law School, court records say.

It looks like Placer County Staff across departments has ongoing issues beyond those I have written about for years. While a lot of people working for Placer County are great people, one of the most consistent issues with County or any government staff is their proclivity to try to run the government by proxy.

It appears that Placer County Staff pulled a classic trick – they put out a detailed report recommending a flawed, substandard provider for services. IT appears they were looking at price only without doing due diligence on the voracity of the provider. (Or perhaps daydreams of a Christmas junket to the headquarters of the preferred vendor in Spain are indeed true and a factor in the recommendation. Conozco que Espana es tanto bonita en la invierna!)

WORSE – THEY PUT THE REPORT OUT AT 4PM ON A FRIDAY BEFORE THANKSGIVING WEEK… WITH THE MEETING TO VOTE ON THE ISSUE IMMEDIATELY FOLLOWING THANKSGIVING WEEK!!! This is unethical at best and MAY be indicative of some undue influence or out of control egos inside the bowels of government.

On The Monday following Thanksgiving – the 5 member Western Placer Waste Management Authority board is going to vote on a contract between “FCC” and “Green Waste”. It is the opinion of this blogger that FCC is a disaster and is a substandard provider. The FCC company is like Three Mile Island in a google search.

The first thing that pops out to me is on a major contract with the City of Dallas – this provider appears to have UNDERBID the contract. This is common – especially when coupled with a nearly immediate request for a cost increase. IT appears they Bid about $71 a ton and within a year went for a “Variable” per ton rate increase. There was another bidder within $3 a ton when FCC won the contract. You tell me what this looks like? See their initial bid here. See the request to jack the price here. In layman’s terms, when you ask for a variable market based fee increase, it means your current prices are under the market – as in you underbid and are not charging enough.

Do note that my understanding of California Law is that underbidding a contract is illegal. Bidding a contract at cost is also illegal. Given the pattern of FCC you have to wonder if this is at play here.

Secondly, it appears that FCC is a pretty big provider – but amazingly has no experience in California. Given the EXTREME regulatory environment in California and virtually non-existent regulations in Texas – how are the staff of the district going to look at a scandal-plagued and fine-plagued provider seriously? (It can’t be as simple as a taxpayer funded trip to Spain, is it?)

According to another source, FCC will be using a composting system called the “Gore System”. (More like AlGore and not Supervisor Gore of Placer County)  You could literally say that FCC and their partner “Gore System” are piles of s–t. Just ask Utah.

AMERICAN FORK, Utah (AP) – Several Utah County cities and businesses are raising a stink over compost piles made from human waste at a sewage treatment plant, saying it’s no way to treat the neighbors.

They filed a $425 million lawsuit against the Timpanogos Special Service District in American Fork seeking relief.

“As the foul odor permeates the surrounding areas, it regularly causes physical illness among residents, workers and visitors,” says the complaint in 4th District Court. It was filed earlier this week by American Fork, neighboring Pleasant Grove, the American Fork Chamber of Commerce and businesses including a BMW dealership and an RV park.

So – do you want this coming to Roseville?

Third – these people have failed to perform. In Orange County Florida, they got massive fines for blowing chunks on their contracts.

FCC proposes to use the same old “Gore System” that is fraught with issues – we will get in to that more in a bit – but suffice to say where was the staff of the Waste District when I was able to find a TON of stuff with a simple google search:

The county slapped fines totaling $19,400 on the hauler, Fomento de Construcciones y Contratas or FCC, which provides sanitation services for about 85,000 residential customers in unincorporated Orange County.

That may not seem like much – but wait, there’s more:

FCC customers registered more than half the 1,135 service complaints received by the solid waste division in the final two weeks of February, when the county started assessing fines for missed pickups and other missteps.

That is a lot of screw ups in a two-week period.

So – The Staff of the Western Placer Waste Management Authority appear to be attempting to Jam Down a contract for FCC.

FCC is based in Spain. Green Waste, the competitor is based in California.

FCC has never done business in California.

FCC literally got sued over piles of s–t in Utah.

FCC literally got fined for hundreds of screw ups in Orange County Florida.

and it appears that FCC has a history of under-bidding contracts and then going back to the well for more.

Is this what Placer County Wants? But wait -there’s more…