By Karina Ioffee, KALW Crosscurrents
If you drive north from San Francisco and through most of Marin County, you get to the town of Novato. Turn east from Highway 101 and you run into the San Pablo wetlands, now being restored after more than a century of infill.
Here, egrets, storks and other birds fly overhead, making the area a popular destination for nature lovers. Nearby, the Petaluma River winds through the hills before connecting to the San Pablo Bay.
It’s a pastoral scene. But just steps away, at the Redwood Landfill, lie mountains of trash. It’s trucked in from Marin and southern Sonoma County every single day.
Alisa McCutcheon, who oversees the landfill’s composting operation, says, “We get 500 to 600 tons per day of garbage. That would be equivalent to about 22 big-rig loads, or tractor trailer loads, of garbage.”
Read the complete story at KALW Crosscurrents.