Byxbee Park Compost Facility Initiative Qualifies for November Ballot

Backers of the Palo Alto Green Energy and Compost Initiative are celebrating news received Wednesday that has qualified for the November ballot. The Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters tallied 5,128 valid signatures out of the 6,023 submitted, according to Donna Grider, Palo Alto's City Clerk. 4,356 valid signatures were needed to qualify.

Voters will decide this fall whether to repurpose 10 acres of the 126-acre City landfill, located alongside , for some kind of facility, perhaps an anaerobic digestion plant, that could convert the City's 60,000 tons per year of organic waste into green energy and compost once the landfill closes in 2012.  

Barring the passage of this initiative, the entire landfill would be added to Byxbee Park.

"We're excited, but not surprised," said Carolyn Curtis, the campaign's volunteer signature gathering coordinator.  "We had a tremendous team of more than 60 volunteers who dedicated hundreds of hours to collecting signatures, and we got great results.  Only 2% of respondents refused to sign our petition because they disagreed with it."

"This is the first activist effort like this I've ever been involved in, and I've ended up with great admiration and respect for everyone who has done the research, spent the time, and followed through until results were achieved," said Lois Fowkes, a long-time Palo Alto resident and signature gatherer for the petition.

Opponents of the measure have argued that building an anaerobic digester on park land would costs millions of dollars more than other plans being considered for dealing with the city's organic waste, and would interfere with the Water Quality Control Plant Master Plan.

Emily Renzel, Coordinator of the Baylands Conservation Committee, could not be immediately reached for comment, but has been a vocal opponent of the measure, Monday night at a packed City Council meeting in which nearly five hours were spent debating this topic.

Cedric de La Beaujardiere, former Co-Chair of the City's Blue Ribbon Task Force on Composting and a proponent of the Green Energy and Compost Initiative, disagrees that anaerobic digestion is too costly and calculated that such a facility in Palo Alto would save the City between $30 and $38 million over the first 20 years, and considerably more after that.