Some institutions long outlive their builders. That will surely be the case with Orange County’s Prima Deshecha Landfill, which will soon undergo improvements that may help extend its life until the year 2102.

The upgrades are good news for anyone who needs to unload a lumpy old mattress or busted TV because changes to the entrance booths will make it easier to get in and faster to get out – the landfill’s current split of public vs. commercial dropoffs is about 70/30, landfill senior project manager Kevin Oxford said.

But construction plans for the San Juan Capistrano-area facility also include building new flares as part of the system that traps methane produced by the landfill, and relocating the plant that converts some of the gas into enough energy to power about 6,000 homes.

“We’re basically preparing the site for the next 80 to 100 years,” OC Waste and Recycling Director Tom Koutroulis said.

And elsewhere on its 1,530 acres, the landfill is testing a new compost facility that will turn grass clippings, animal manure and other greenwaste – and eventually kitchen food scraps, which a new state law requires to be separated from other trash – into soil-enriching products that can be added back to gardens, yards and landscaping.

Oxford said landfills used to just to collect whatever people were throwing away and bury it. Now, with changing demands from consumers and new laws, the industry is pivoting to better separate different kinds of waste, so as to reuse and recycle as much as possible.

The county operates three active landfills, but the ones in Brea and Irvine are for commercial use only; residents can’t dump waste there. Koutroulis said the Brea site’s permit expires in 2036, after which it would likely close.

That will shift more traffic to Prima Deshecha, where work began earlier this month on improvements to the entrance.

The facility now has three entry lanes that can stack about 20 to 25 trucks, Oxford said. The reconfigured entrance will have four lanes and double the queuing capacity, plus new booths to pay dump fees, which he said will “speed up the transactions on leaving.”

The total project is expected to cost about $22.5 million and includes replacement of the flare, which helps safely burn off excess gases, with two new ones that Koutroulis said state and federal environmental regulators consider cleanest and most effective.

On any given day at Prima Deshecha now, waste haulers drive in and deposit their loads in “Zone 1,” where a compactor smashes the material flat to make room for more; when the trash level across the zone gets to a certain height, it’s covered with a layer of dirt and the process starts again on top. Elsewhere in the zone, workers collect mattresses that get sent away to be dismantled and recycled, and appliances such as washers and dryers are loaded up to be sent to a metal recycling facility.

There’s also usually a falconer using a trained hawk or falcon (or the sound of a bullwhip when there’s not a bird on duty) to drive off pigeons and gulls that would otherwise pick over the trash and fly away with pieces they might later drop outside the landfill’s boundaries.

On another part of the property is the composting operation that launched in 2020 and is now ramping up to produce compost that could be used in parks and for habitat restoration. It now comprises about 50 windrows, or long, straight piles, of mulch-like organic material in various stages of decomposing. The windrows get turned regularly by a large rolling machine that can straddle a pile and sift through it with a rotating blade that resembles a giant drill bit.

The landfill originally opened in 1976. Even as recently as about 15 years ago, officials expected Prima Deshecha to be full around 2067, but that hasn’t happened as fast as projected, in part because of laws requiring more items to be taken out of the regular waste stream and in some cases recycled. In 2019, county officials got Prima Deshecha’s operating permit extended to 2102.

A little less than 700 acres of the property is designated for waste disposal (the site provides a wide buffer for surrounding neighborhoods, and some of the land is intended to be preserved as natural habitat). Zone 1 west of Avenida La Pata still has more room for trash, but the anticipated opening of Zone 4 in mid-2025 will allow landfill operators to alternate where they place trash to address “seasonal needs” and odor control concerns, Koutroulis said.

New tunnels have already been built under Avenida La Pata to get trucks to Zone 4. Oxford said regulators are expected to approve plans for a first phase of Zone 4 this year.

While some of the changes at Prima Deshecha are intended to improve users’ experience, Koutroulis said in the bigger picture, the landfill is being prepared for the future and the continuing “pivot from from a landfilling company to a resource recovery model.”

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