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David J. Irey, Esq. July 18, 2006 Page 4 as private landfill operators, is that the tonnage limits in SWFPs have been interpreted as excluding daily cover materials, including materials accepted for and used as ADC. Forward's past practice experience, as well as my own, is confirmed by the California Integrated Waste Management Board's guidance advisory to Local Enforcement Agencies, which was promulgated June 30, 1995, and which was in effect at the time that the Forward Landfill SWFP was concurred in by the CIWMB and issued by the LEA to the Forward Landfill in June of 2003. (See Tab 4.) That guidance document is entitled"What Tonnage Amounts Handled On Site Count for Purposes of the Tonnage Limits in the Permit?" The advisory indicates that"the intent of this advisory is to clarify the confusion of what materials received and/or handled at a facility count toward the tonnage limits placed in the Solid Waste Facilities Permit(permit)." In the second paragraph of the guidance document, the CIWMB makes the following unequivocal statement: "The tonnage counted does not include material used for daily cover."1 Finally,the weekly tonnage limit in the SWFP for the Forward Landfill is based on the combination of the tonnage limits from the separate SWFPs for the Forward and Austin Road landfills. As you may know, in late 2000 Forward purchased the adjacent Austin Road Landfill from the City of Stockton. Forward then sought a modified SWFP for the Forward Landfill combining the operations of these two adjacent landfills under a single SWFP. That"combined" SWFP is the 2003 SWFP in question. Under these former separate SWFPs, the Forward Landfill was allowed to receive 40,060 tons of refuse for disposal per week and the Austin Road landfill was allowed to receive 6,000 tons of refuse for disposal per week. The combined weekly disposal tonnage limits from these former permits is reflected in the current weekly tonnage limit of 46,060 tons—,confirming that the disposal tonnage limits from these former SWFPs were carried over into the new SWFP. The 2001 Joint Technical Document for the Forward Landfill (part of the permit application for the current SWFP— see excerpts at Tab 5.)2 refers to the combined tonnage limits of these two landfills and make it clear that the tonnage limit in the landfill permit did not include daily cover, and furthermore, confirms that the tonnage limit as applied to refuse for disposal would yield the current estimated closure date of 2020. The environmental documents for the Forward Landfill also confirm that these tonnage limits were based on refuse tonnage for disposal rather than daily cover. (See, for example, the Human Health Risk 11 understand this guidance document was rescinded by the CIWMB in March of 2005 for reasons other than the comment that permit tonnage limitations do not include material used for daily cover. What is important for purposes of this analysis is that the CIWMB's guidance document was in effect at the time that Forward applied for and received its SWFP in 2003. That guidance document is the best evidence that when the SWFP permit was issued,it was understood and intended by Forward and the LEA/CIWMB that the tonnage limit in the permit did not include tonnage of daily cover materials. Again,this is also consistent with past practice under the prior and existing Forward SWFPs and at numerous landfill sites throughout California. 2 The Joint Technical Document refers to a maximum refuse inflow of 7,880 tons per day(based on the former daily limits in the Forward and Austin Road SWFPs of 6,600 and 1,200 tons per day,respectively),and makes it clear that daily cover quantities were not included in these tonnage limits.The estimated year of closure based on this refuse inflow was 2020. Later,the maximum daily tonnage limit was increased in the combined permit to 8,668 but the weekly tonnage limits remained the same. Hence,the estimated year of closure did not change.