Home Care In Santa Paula, CA

When Sally Brown finds herself with food scraps and no available compost pile, she takes matters into her own hands.

“I’ll surreptitiously put it outside,” said Brown, a research professor and soil scientist at the University of Washington.

“Compost is a way to effectively feed your soil,“ she said. “When I go someplace where there’s no composting, I get very upset.”

Brown does that because organic material exposed to oxygen — you know, decomposing in a compost pile or surreptitiously tossed behind a bush — creates CO2. But organic material rotting in landfills creates methane, which has a much larger climate impact than CO2. “So getting stuff that rots out of landfills is a very cheap way to quickly reduce carbon emissions,” said Brown.

At least, in theory.

Landfills account for roughly 14% of all U.S. methane emissions, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. This means that that slice of the emissions pie could get way smaller if we were better at closing the gap between organic waste producers — households and businesses — and compost users.

The problem is that most of us don’t live near farms that can readily use the lawn trimmings or avocado skins produced in our homes. That’s where companies like Agromin come in.

Agromin is one of the largest organics recyclers in California. Bill Camarillo, the company’s co-founder and CEO, said his company handles about 1.2 million tons of organic waste per year but hopes to make that 10 million tons over the next decade. “I’m on a 10 million ton march,” he said.

In a receiving yard in Santa Paula, California, about an hour from Los Angeles, trucks carrying green waste collected from households and businesses dump material onto large piles. “But as you can see, this material hasn’t been cleaned yet,” said Camarillio.

A couple of employees were pulling plastic bags and other noncompostable garbage out by hand. Once that’s done, the waste gets pushed into a grinder to create more surface area, which helps speed the decomposition process.

Roughly 80% of Agromin’s revenue comes from something called tipping fees. Cities and private companies that haul waste pay Agromin about $60 per ton to accept the organic material their trucks collect.

Camarillo said the other 20% of the company’s revenue comes from turning that waste into mulch or soil additives that farmers, landscapers and individual gardeners can buy. “It’s kind of like a vitamin we put back in the ground that’s alive,” he said.

The material here is mostly yard and farm waste; there were piles of rotting lemons discarded from a nearby grove.

After cleaning and grinding that material down, Agromin moves it to an adjacent yard for “finishing. “And you’ll notice a distinct difference in odor,” Camarillo said. “Not that this is bad — smells like money to me — but if you go to the other side, it smells very earthy.”

Decomposition naturally raises the temperature enough to kill pathogens. The entire process — from the time the material hits the ground to being ready for application on a farm — takes at least 45 days. “Then, it’s off in a truck going to a ranch somewhere,” Camarillo said.

One factor driving this industry forward is a California law known as SB 1383, which requires cities to divert more organics from landfills and purchase a certain amount of finished compost based on the number of residents in their communities. It’s meant to pull on both the supply and demand sides of the compost market.

That law has helped Agromin grow its business as a compost broker for jurisdictions trying to comply.

“So, I’ll just take a city of Ventura as an example,” Camarillo said. “They called me three years ago and said, ‘What am I supposed to do with 8,000 tons of compost?’”

For some jurisdictions, Agromin helps identify ways to use that material, such as on parklands or in city landscaping. For others, they find farmers and other end-users willing to accept the compost.

“We partner with a farmer under a direct service provider agreement, where the farmer agrees to accept the compost from the city that the city buys and will pay for the delivery and the spreading so the city only has to buy the compost,” Camarillo said.

One thing that helps reduce that costs is putting compost facilities closer to compost users. The Santa Paula facility is actually on farmland owned by a company called Limoneira, which grows citrus and avocados.

“This is where we are applying all the stuff that comes from Agromin,” said Edgar Gutierrez, Limoneira’s director of farming operations, in a field of avocado plants sitting on mounds of mulchy compost.

There are visible reminders that the compost there once came from a landscaping operation or someone’s green bin, like a piece of blue plastic or a chunk of a wooden shipping pallet. But mostly, it just looks like dirt.

“It’s basically giving life to that soil,” said Gutierez. Eventually, that soil will grow avocados — the skins of which we mostly throw away.

The California Coastal Commission is set to meet in Santa Barbara on April 9-11, and with no shortage of Santa Barbara–related items on the agenda, the meeting is likely to be highly attended and opportunistically located for those who want to get involved. A hefty enforcement report focused solely on oil operations off the Santa Barbara coast, appeals on the Garden Street Hotel and Rosewood Miramar developments, and UCSB’s student housing aspirations will come before the commission on Thursday, April 10.

One of the hotter topics at the Coastal Commission’s meeting will be a lengthy enforcement report on Sable Offshore, the oil company working day and night to restart oil platforms and pipelines along the Gaviota Coast. Commissioners will vote on whether to impose a nearly $15 million administrative penalty on Sable for its alleged unpermitted construction work in the coastal zone and disregard for one of two cease-and-desist orders issued by the commission’s executive director, Kate Huckelbridge. On top of the penalty, staff recommend that the commissioners require Sable to abide by an environmental restoration order and a third cease-and-desist order.

The Coastal Commission will also hear all about UC Santa Barbara’s plans to construct a new seven-building, 2,224-bed student housing development between Mesa Road and Stadium Road. The San Benito housing project was born of two lawsuits filed against the university by the City of Goleta and Santa Barbara County, both alleging that the university neglected to provide adequate student housing, which negatively affected their respective jurisdictions. The university settled in March 2024 for $6 million and a promise to put student housing initiatives at the forefront of their work.

With San Benito construction already underway, UCSB has asked the commission to allow amendments to their plans, namely raising the maximum building heights on all seven buildings from 65 feet to 81 feet. Commission staff have recommended that certain buildings be allowed to raise their heights to between 70 and 80 feet, and only one be approved to hit the 81-foot mark. Additionally, UCSB has asked for modifications to parking regulations that currently require one space to be built for every four student beds. Staff have recommended that the university be allowed to reduce this ratio by assigning students parking spaces in other existing structures and lots in the area. Commissioners will vote on whether to approve UCSB’s new development plan with commission staff’s modifications at next Thursday’s meeting.

Moving right down the coast, commissioners will hear appeals filed by Santa Barbara nonprofit Keep the Funk and Steven Johnson against the proposed 250-room Garden Street Hotel. The development was approved by the Santa Barbara Planning Commission in March 2024, then survived its first appeal by Keep the Funk at City Council in November. Now, it comes to the Coastal Commission. The appellants argue that the proposed development, which includes a large underground garage, would disrupt contaminated soil and have negative impacts on water quality in the coastal area.

Also on the Coastal Commission’s appeals agenda are those against the Rosewood Miramar expansion in Montecito, which was set to bring commercial retail space and affordable housing units to the upscale beachside hotel. The appellants, nonprofit group Heal the Ocean and Unite Here Local 11, allege that the affordable housing units are slated for areas that are far more flood-prone than the retail space, citing some serious social equity issues. Both the Santa Barbara County Planning Commission and the Board of Supervisors unanimously voted to approve the project last year after multiple appeals, including one from Heal the Ocean.

In both cases, the Coastal Commission must decide if the appeals raise a “substantial issue” after hearing from all sides, and if so, schedule a public hearing on the issue for a future meeting. The commission’s staff have found no substantial issue in either of the appeals, and therefore recommend that the commissioners uphold previous decisions made by their respective Santa Barbara governments.

The California Coastal Commission’s meeting is open to the public, and will convene at 9 a.m. April 9-11 at the Hilton Santa Barbara Beachfront Hotel (633 E. Cabrillo Blvd.). The meeting will be live-streamed. Community members can participate in public comment by emailing the staff member listed on the item of interest or by filling out a speaker request form to comment in person, all of which can be found here.