Salinas reckons with where to put the dump, and finds no easy answers.

There’s little about Salinas Mayor Joe Gunter that would suggest he’d rally for environmental justice. He opposed the city’s sanctuary city resolution to make undocumented immigrants feel safe (speaking of looking out for the little guy), and he was a strong opponent of Measure Z, the countywide ballot measure that banned fracking and the expansion of the oil industry in South County (speaking of the environment). (Measure Z, which voters approved last year, is on trial this week; see story, p. 14.)

So when Gunter utters the words “environmental justice,” it’s worth tuning in.

The reason he’s invoking the phrase is that the Salinas Valley Solid Waste Authority is exploring options for the future of the dump that’s currently smack dab in the middle of Salinas.

For years, the urgency of the conversation about relocating the Sun Street transfer station has ebbed and flowed, and now it’s back – and Gunter is railing against one option among several: keeping it where it is and building a nicer, enclosed facility.

“It’s in an area where there are people with not a lot of income and need a decent place to live,” he says. “We’ve done some environmental injustices here. You don’t put the dump in the poorest part of town, and that’s what’s been done.”

Fair enough. But here’s the hard part: If you want to put a dump anywhere, you’ll face either a legitimate environmental justice argument against it, or a more straightforward NIMBY argument.

One option for relocating the Sun Street Transfer Station is a property north of town, at Sala and Harrison roads, near Highway 101 – but Gunter and other SVSWA board members don’t want the dump there, either. For two years, SVSWA has been exercising an option to buy that land by putting down $75,000 a year. The third of up to four payments to keep that option open is due in January, and when the SVSWA board meets Thursday, Nov. 16 at 6pm, the potential acquisition of the property is on the agenda. (It’s a real estate deal and hence happens in closed session.)

Gunter, who is an alternate board member and will be sitting in on Thursday, hopes to kill the next round of payment for the option. That where the NIMBY defense begins. “We should not be putting the garbage dump in our town,” he says. “I don’t want this at the entrance to my city.”

That reaction frustrates SVSWA General Manager Patrick Mathews, who has watched the dump debate for years. “This is quite the soap opera,” he says. “No one wants these types of facilities around them.”

Mathews wants to see the board at least keep the Sala Road property in the mix of possibilities for now, and he’s moving forward with a $900,000 environmental review of SVWSA’s dump options. Both spots Gunter disdains – the existing Sun Street site and the Sala Road property – are in the running. The environmental impact report, due out next year, will analyze five possibilities: the Harrison/Sala property; the existing open-air, low-tech facility; that existing site, bolstered with a modern, enclosed facility; a much smaller dump in Prunedale, and more trucking to SVSWA’s Johnson Canyon Landfill in Gonzales; or a garbage to haul Gonzales, using waste-processing technology in partnership with a company called Global Organics Energy.

Gunter would rather see Salinas residents start shipping trash to a neighboring jurisdiction, Monterey Regional Waste Management District, which operates the landfill in Marina. In short, he’s ready for Salinas to break up with SVWSA.

The push to withdraw from SVSWA, which formed in 1997 and inherited two landfills from the county and two from Salinas, isn’t new. Every few years, county and Salinas members start advocating to jump ship and haul trash to Marina instead.

That option doesn’t entirely resolve environmental injustice, Mathews says: “To move garbage from Salinas to [Marina], the majority of trucks drive through North Marina or Castroville, both impacted communities. Now we’re concentrating waste into another community.”

As long as we have trash, it has to be someone’s problem. For now, the SVSWA board should keep its options open – including trucking garbage to Marina, even though it would mean putting SVSWA staffers out of jobs.

SARA RUBIN is editor of the Weekly. Reach her at sara@mcweekly.com.