The looming closure of the Miramar Landfill in four to six years has San Diego officials scrambling to make big changes at the site and come up with a plan for where to dispose of the city’s future trash.
They’re asking the Navy to allow the landfill to get taller than currently allowed in order to buy extra time. They’re also making plans for a large sorter to keep more recyclable waste out of the landfill and for a transfer station to let trucks haul trash to another landfill.
City officials previously announced plans to build a regional organics processing facility for $77 million that will allow the Miramar greenery to close, opening some untapped landfill capacity that will also buy extra time.
By “closure,” city officials don’t mean all operations will cease at the 1,500-acre site, which has served as a city landfill since 1959. They mean the landfill will reach capacity and stop being an active landfill because there will be no space left for non-recyclable waste.
That will force the city to find another landfill, which will almost certainly come with substantial costs that the city will pass on to trash customers.
Before San Diego voters approved a 2022 ballot measure that allowed the city to start charging for trash pickup at single-family homes and small apartment complexes, money for all these efforts would have come from the city’s general fund.
But because of that ballot measure, the city will be able to pass many of these costs on to city trash customers.
Another likely financial impact to the city is that private haulers who now dump trash at Miramar will have to find another landfill, costing the city revenue known as “tipping fees” those haulers now pay for use of Miramar.
Because of those potential impacts on customer bills and city finances, Councilmember Sean Elo-Rivera and city trash officials have agreed to hold a series of public hearings during the next year on the future of the landfill.
“This is not a fun conversation,” Elo-Rivera said during an Oct. 16 meeting of the council’s Environment Committee that launched the series. “But we can’t get to a better place unless we acknowledge the situation we’re staring at.”
City officials say they are developing a strategic plan that will answer the key question of where the city will dispose of non-recyclable waste after Miramar closes.
A likely short-term location is the Sycamore Landfill in Santee, which the city can use as part of its franchise agreement with private hauler Republic Services.
But Jeremy Culuko, interim assistant director of the city’s Environmental Services Department, said it’s a priority to find “an efficient location” long term for the city to dispose of trash that can’t be recycled.
Another key goal is to transform the Miramar landfill into what Culuko called a “circular economy,” where nearly everything that arrives goes out in a different form — reducing pressure on the shrinking landfill space.
Organic waste like fruit and yard trimmings will be transformed into compost and mulch at the new organics processing facility, which is scheduled to begin operating in 2027.
A new sorting machine, which city officials call a “resource recovery facility,” will reduce impact on the shrinking landfill space by separating goods that can be recycled like bottles and cans. It’s slated to begin operating in 2031.
City officials are also planning multiple new projects in 2026 and 2027 that will allow Miramar to transform more methane gas emanating from the trash into energy.
The city has already begun doing that on a small scale, creating electricity used by the neighboring Marine Corps base and a biosolids facility operated by the city’s Public Utilities Department.
Another key project, also slated for completion in 2031, is the new transfer station.
The goal is to have all city trash trucks keep bringing waste to Miramar after the landfill closes, so that it can be transferred there to large trucks that take it to another landfill.
City officials declined to give cost estimates for the sorting facility or transfer station.
“The city is currently developing a request for proposals to evaluate options for the resource recovery facility and transfer station,” city officials said by email. “The costs of the project, funding sources and potential impacts to city collections services will be identified through this process.”
They said that the request for proposals would also evaluate what landfills other than Sycamore the city could potentially use in the short term.
Before those projects get started, city officials said they are confident they can negotiate a deal with the Navy to increase the height of the active portion of the Miramar landfill from 485 feet to 510 feet.
They said that deal, which is being negotiated now, is crucial to keeping the landfill open until sometime from 2029 to 2031. Without that deal, the landfill would need to close even sooner, Culuko said.
No further height increases would be possible because of Federal Aviation Administration rules regarding airspace, said Jen Winfrey, assistant deputy director for disposal in the Environmental Services Department.
That’s because the part of the landfill that remains active is near the active runway of the military base on the west side of the landfill near Interstate 805. The landfill is bordered by 805, the base, state Route 52 and state Route 163.
Winfrey said the city also couldn’t spread the landfill out wider than the current 1,500 acres because of strict state regulations regarding the expansion of landfills.
The organics processing facility must open on time in 2027 for the landfill to remain open until between 2029 and 2031, city officials said. That’s because the opening of the facility will allow the closure of the Miramar greenery, which sits on old landfill with some remaining capacity.
It’s not clear how the Otay Landfill in Chula Vista might factor into the city’s short-term and long-term plans.
The city has access to Otay thanks to its franchise agreement with Republic. And city officials say they’ve been using it to dispose of trash from South Bay neighborhoods like San Ysidro and Nestor since as early as 1983.But city officials have declined to say what role Otay might play.