Cortina landfill project stalls

Plans to build a landfill on Native American land in Colusa County appear stalled after a series of  setbacks.

A decision by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to require additional environmental review could delay the project by more than a year, officials said.

There’s also the matter of money. North Bay Corp., the project developer, owes about $112,000 for previous environmental reviews and attorney fees, Henry Rodegerdts, county counsel, said Monday. The county initiated arbitration proceedings about two weeks ago seeking payment.

“The county feels that North Bay is in breach of contract,” Rodegerdts said, “and the project will not move forward until this issue is resolved.”

In August 2007, the county entered into a reimbursement agreement with Santa Rosa-based North Bay. The agreement requires North Bay and Cortina Integrated to pay all the county’s costs associated with processing applications, including environmental review.

If North Bay doesn’t pay, the county doesn’t have to process applications, Marshall said.

Multiple phone calls to North Bay and Earthworks Inc. seeking comment were not returned.

There has been no contact from North Bay in more than 30 days, Marshall said.

“They’re being quiet to everybody,” he added.

In August, North Bay scrapped a six-month lawsuit that sought to force a farming family to move or raze a decades-old barn near Spring Valley Road, the route to the proposed landfill.

The suit, filed Feb. 7 in Colusa County Superior Court, demanded that members of the Marsh family that own the site move the barn at least 30 feet off the road. The suit claimed the barn is too close to the road and has stalled construction of the landfill, thus creating a public nuisance.

But Tedd Mehr, the Colusa-based attorney representing the Marsh family, said the developers withdrew the case Aug. 15.

“We argued that the barn did not encroach on the road and, therefore, did not create a nuisance,” Mehr said Monday. “We obtained an engineer’s survey that proved the barn didn’t encroach the road.”