Willow Glen Resident
News
Dumping could force Goodwill to close several of its locations
By Eli Segall
Goodwill of Silicon Valley does a lot more than bring clothes, furniture and job training to those in need. The organization spends $1 million annually to haul away other people's trash, a large portion of which is illegally dumped on the nonprofit group's doorstep.
The problem is only getting worse. Goodwill may shut donation centers deemed trash magnets, said Goodwill executive vice president and chief operating officer Chris King. Goodwill shut two locations in San Jose last year because of dumping, and it closed a facility in Hollister two weeks ago for the same reason.
The company has not decided which sites it will close, but the Goodwill retail store at the corner of Almaden Expressway and Foxworthy Avenue is among those that have become magnets for dumping, store employees say; items left behind include couches, washing machines and dressers, said cashier Micki Lopez.
"It's a huge problem, and it happens almost every day," Lopez said. "They come and dump on us like we're a garbage dump."
For more than a decade, the city has reimbursed Goodwill, the Salvation Army and the St. Vincent de Paul Society for their trash-hauling efforts. It added Hope Services to that list in 2002. But the amount that the city reimburses has decreased in recent years, which has only increased the burden on the nonprofit agencies, King added.
Budget cuts have forced the environmental services department to chop 10 percent of all general fund expenditures; to meet these requirements, it siphons from trash payments.
"Historically we provided a full reimbursement," said Paul Ledesma, an environmental services specialist for the San Jose Department of Environmental Services. "For the last two or three years, we've covered nine to 10 months' worth of their annual fees."
The San Jose City Council on Jan. 30 approved $362,848 to reimburse Goodwill this year. The council approved $128,244 for Salvation Army and $6,312 to Hope Services.
Amounts allocated were dollar-for-dollar reimbursements of state and city trash fees, Ledesma said. Such reimbursements began in 1992 with the city's Reuse and Recycling Agreement, which was enacted to help nonprofit groups offset rising hauling costs, he added.
Goodwill accepts unwanted clothing and household items at its 26 donation trailers and 15 retail stores across Santa Clara Valley, with sites in Willow Glen, Los Gatos, Campbell and South San Jose. Company revenues are made almost exclusively selling salvageable goods. In turn, Goodwill performs an untold amount of recycling, as such goods otherwise would have been thrown away.
Its work helps San Jose fulfill a state mandate that 50 percent of all waste be recycled, said environmental services director John Stufflebean.
"San Jose has not only a requirement, but an obligation to recycle," he said. "These companies help with that."
Companies remain hindered, though, by rising trash costs. In San Jose, private contractors make commercial trash pickups; rates are established through agreements between garbage companies and their clients. When hauling costs increase--as they have each year since King joined Goodwill in 2003--so does illegal dumping, he said.
"We're always monitoring for dumping," King said. "If there's an increase, we will close it."
