•    Mesquite Regional Landfill (MRL) is primarily a waste-by-rail project. 

•    The Sanitation Districts of Los Angeles County is seeking to modify the MRL conditional use permit to allow the trucking of some waste. The existing permit allows the landfill to accept 20,000 tons-per-day of municipal solid waste by rail. The proposed permit amendment seeks approval to truck of up to 4,000 (tpd), or 1/5th of what the Mesquite Regional Landfill is permitted to receive.   

•    Initially, some trucking is needed because the  rail infrastructure at Mesquite and at the front end is not projected to be completed until 2012. 

•    The Sanitation Districts propose to truck 300 tons-per-day of waste to Mesquite—about 15 round trips daily—to get the landfill into operation. That small-scale operation would pay Imperial County a host fee of about $100,000 per year. Even after there is the 4,000 tpd of waste needed to fill a unit train, some trucking would be needed. Truck hauling would be used until tonnage increases enough to fill successive trains. 

•    A number of factors contribute to determining how many trucks will be needed to transport waste to MRL in future years. The proposed permit modification would allow up to 200 trucking round trips per day. 

•    The Sanitation Districts track the amount of waste that goes to landfills daily and the permitted capacity of landfills used by its Los Angeles County communities, their limitations and potential expansions. It also monitors population projections in its service area. These and other factors are used to develop projection reports to estimate when a landfill capacity shortfall is likely to occur.  

•    The landfill capacity shortfall analysis provides a way to project the amount of waste that will move from Sanitation Districts communities to the MRL, either by a 4,000-ton-per-day unit train, or by truck.