Three fires in 12 months? This north Fresno recycling center has outstayed its welcome
A year from now, provided it actually rains over the winter, the bluffs along Friant Road in north Fresno will grow back and look normal again. Today, some 60 acres remain blackened by a recent fire that broke out of a nearby waste disposal site.
Question is, should the Republic Services Recycling Center and Transfer Station on Rice Road — site of three fires in a 12 month-span — regrow someplace else? Isn’t it time we change the old way of thinking? Stop using the San Joaquin River bottom lands as a dumping ground and erase the visual blight of having a disposal site in full view of the Lewis S. Eaton Trail.
“It’s a needed facility, but I think it has outgrown the reason why it should be down here,” said Clay Davis, who has lived near the recycling center and transfer station for almost three decades.
“Thirty or 40 years ago it made sense for it to be here because we didn’t look at the river bottom the way we do today. I remember coming down here as a kid when it was a big open-pit dump. But now, with the parkway starting to expand, it will basically surround this facility and I’m wondering whether it should be relocated.”
Formerly a sand and gravel mine, the 14.24-acre property at 10463 N. Rice Road (the northwest corner of Rice Road and Lanes Road) became a dump site in 1970 before transitioning to a recycling center and transfer station in 1985. It operates under a conditional-use permit issued by Fresno County. When asked for a copy, county officials provided packets from three Board of Supervisors meetings. The most recent was in 1988.
Out of sight (except to neighbors and trail users) and out of mind — until the recent string of fires. The first occurred last July, when crews managed to contain the flames within the 2,500-square foot main building. That was not the case May 21, when 25 mph winds whipped flames outside the facility and onto adjacent bluffs and neighboring properties. Firefighters closed Friant Road to traffic as they worked to prevent burning embers from blowing across the four-lane expressway into the backyards of homes in the Woodward Lake development.
Two weeks later, crews responded to another blaze on Rice Road unrelated to the recycling center. Monday, they were called to the disposal site for the third time in 12 months. This time, quick action by employees (who utilized a water truck and front loader) as well as the existing burn scar kept flames from spreading, according to Cal Fire battalion chief Dan Urias.
“Every time we hear Rice Road is on fire we’re thinking the same thing,” Urias said. “Knowing they have a multitude of material coming through that facility, it’s the nature of the job.”
Fresno certainly is experiencing a spate of recycling center fires. On June 18, a massive blaze at the Cedar Avenue Recycling and Transfer Station near Highway 99 south of downtown exposed residents to toxic fumes from plumes of black smoke and ash. City officials are being called out for their lack of response.
Cause of recycling center fires remains unknown
What’s causing these fires? Cal Fire doesn’t know. Neither does Fresno County Supervisor Steve Brandau, whose district includes the Rice Road facility. In general, however, fires at recycling centers are caused by lithium batteries, pool chemicals or hot coals.
“The person probably doesn’t realize it’s still hot,” Brandau said. “They dump and just drive off and a fire breaks out.”
Brandau told me he is concerned about the recent string of fires at the Republic Services Recycling Center and Transfer Station and has asked his staff to investigate: “We need better answers than, ‘It’s one of these three things.’ ”
How much oversight, or even awareness, officials have over the recycling center is in question. According to Brandau, the county has someone stationed onsite to “oversee” what gets dumped. However, an employee told me (speaking through a chain-link fence topped with razor wire) that wasn’t factual and only four people worked there, all of whom work for Republic Services.
Employees referred all questions about the fire to Republic Services division manager Cindy Salters, who did not return a call seeking comment.
No one has lived on Rice Road longer, or has deeper ties to the land, than Fresno State marketing professor William Rice. P.J. Rice, Bill’s blacksmith grandfather, moved here from Kentucky in the late 1800s and at one time owned more than 200 acres near the San Joaquin River.
Much of that land eventually got sold, including the acreage occupied by the recycling center and transfer station. Rice, one of his sons and a couple grandchildren live a couple hundred yards away in separate homes.
Neighbor: Disposal site more ‘benefit’ than ‘burden’
While Rice doesn’t enjoy living near a disposal site, citing noise caused by the constant flow of trucks as well as odors that waft onto his property, he believes it’s fine where it is and doesn’t need to move.
“Is it kind of an eyesore? Absolutely,” Rice said. “But that’s what dumps and recycling centers are. We have to put our trash and recycling some place … . I look at it more as a benefit to the community rather than a burden on me.”
The Republic Services Recycling Center and Transfer Station serves the city of Clovis as well as some Fresno County residents. (Recycling services are being diverted elsewhere due to damage from the fire.) North Fresno has no other such facilities. The nearest waste disposal site is the Clovis Landfill on Auberry Road, eight miles away.
Asking Republic Services to cease operations in the San Joaquin river bottom, or compelling the company to do so, poses its own set of problems. There are few suitable locations for a disposal site, and moving it further out of town would lead to an increase in air pollution caused by the constant flow of trucks.
“Everybody needs it, but nobody wants it in their backyard,” said Tom Volpa, whose family used to own the Rice Road dump and leases the property to Republic Services. “That’s what it amounts to. There’s nowhere else that provides that service on the north side of town.”
Volpa and Rice both make good points. My counter-argument would be Fresno only has one river that flows through the city and one river parkway trail for its residents to enjoy. But rather than showcasing those amenities, we seem perfectly content with clinging to old, trashy habits because it’s expedient to do so.
For how long?
