Chris Sneddon Named New Head of Santa Barbara County Public Works

Supervisors Confirm Sneddon’s Appointment Before Diving into Tajiguas Landfill

Chris Sneddon | Credit: Courtesy

Chris Sneddon will be stepping into Scott McGolpin’s shoes as the head of Santa Barbara County’s Public Works Department at the end of March, when McGolpin retires after 37 years with the county. Like McGolpin, Sneddon comes from leading the county’s Transportation Division, which has 120 employees and an annual budget of more than $80 million. He holds engineering degrees from Notre Dame and the Colorado School of Mines and has been a recognizable face at Public Works for the past 21 years. Sneddon’s salary came to about $224,000 annually during Tuesday’s appointment hearing.

On his plate for many years to come will be the county’s Tajiguas Landfill, whose first operator — MSB, a k a Mustang Renewable Power Ventures — was fired by the county in December. The Board of Supervisors’ slate on Tuesday held several agreements with contractors operating the various functions at Tajiguas, among them Diani Building Corporation, which built the new ReSource Center facilities at Tajiguas and will be continuing to repair and do any deferred maintenance on the buildings and related units, such as the biofilters, explained Martin Wilder, an interim deputy director for Public Works.

Contracts to Pacific Petroleum California Inc. and Patriot Environmental Services Inc. to deal with excess water onsite will also continue. Pacific Petroleum has been hauling and renting storage tanks to the county to hold runoff from the compost heaps — generated by heavy winter rains — and, as needed, percolate tank sludge and landfill gas condensate and leachate. Patriot, which locally is headquartered in Santa Paula, will continue to haul the liquids out-of-county and did not return calls requesting the location.

The three contractors had fulfilled these functions during Mustang’s tenure, and the total contract amounts are limited to $1 million through the end of June 2025.

The open face of the Tajiguas Landfill, captured in 2021, lies beneath the anaerobic digester and compost winnowing structures at the top of the hill. | Credit: Erick Madrid

On Tuesday, the supervisors also set a hearing for March 19 concerning the CEQA ramifications of the proposed expansion of the landfill. Though an additional 6.1 million cubic yards of capacity is slated to be added through 2038 — an additional 12 years for the landfill’s lifetime — Wilder stated the need was not because of the shortcomings of the new recycling and organic digesting facilities at Tajiguas. Rather, the pandemic and related online shopping and shipping produced a quantity of onetime-use materials, boxes, packaging, and other throwaways that exceeded all trash projections set in 2010.

As for those shortcomings, they arise from an insufficient amount of useful digestate coming from the anaerobic digester, which is intended to produce compost when mixed with green waste. Wilder indicated the county was coming to an arrangement for a new operator for the massive structure of 16 concrete bunkers and would continue to work with what it had. He said they anticipated that the new Gore covering over and aeration within the compost heaps would increase compost quality and reduce the smells afflicting the downwind community at Arroyo Quemada.