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There are over 200 employees at the Department.  Over half of them are in the field working at the landfills or performing support activities to landfill operations.  The Department has three Divisions – Administration, Engineering/Operations, and Environmental.  Each division has multiple branches as shown on the Organizational Chart.

Administrative Division

The Administrative Division provides support services for the daily push, pack, and cover operations of the landfill.  This includes: 

  • Administrative Services & Support
  • Fleet (Fleet Administration, Equipment Procurement, Parts Warehouse, Equipment and Vehicle Maintenance)
  • Gate Fee
  • Fiscal (General Accounting and Reporting, Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, Asset Management, Purchasing, Budget, Financial Analysis, and Payroll)
  • Human Capital Management
Engineering/Operations Division

The Department oversees many active, inactive and closed landfill sites that the Engineering/Operations Division must design, permit, construct, operate and maintain.  When one thinks about the work performed, thoughts immediately go to the Badlands and Lamb Canyon Landfills, our major active sites.  However, there are still many inactive and officially closed landfill sites that require equal or even greater amounts of time in permitting and maintenance than our major active landfill sites do.  Most activities are performed in-house, with little use of consultants.  Activities include:

  • Planning
  • Design (preparing grading plans, hydrology studies, soil loss analysis, seismic and stability studies, hydraulic calculations, traffic plans, designing state of the art liner systems, etc.)
  • Permitting (preparing necessary documents to obtain permits and operating the site in compliance with federal and state landfill regulations
  • Construction Management (preparing contract documents, performing construction oversight of public works contracts, etc.)
  • Operations (overseeing the daily “push, pack, and cover” operation of burying refuse)
  • Refuse Control (litter control, Illegal Dumping Cleanup & Graffiti Abatement Program, Post Closure Maintenance, Community Clean-Ups)
  • Community outreach, composting and vermicomposting education, and recycling information for both businesses and residents 
Environmental Division

The Environmental Division oversees a variety of support activities to the daily push, pack, and cover operations at the site.  This includes:

Some Interesting Facts
  • The first County Operated landfill was Pedley, which opened in 1932.
  • Landfills were primarily burn sites until the 1960’s.
  • The Department was originally the Waste Disposal Division of the County Road Department. 
  • The Riverside County Waste Management Department was created in 1986 and had 106 employees.  Currently there are over 200 employees. 
  • Automated scales were first installed in 1978. 
  • The original tipping fee was $2.25 per ton (fee was based on the number of axles). 
  • The cost to construct the bottom liner and top cap of a landfill, on average, costs approximately $500,000 per acre. 
  • The Department is responsible for 39 landfills, of which 34 are closed.  Even the closed ones require significant resources to manage them in perpetuity. 
  • In 2015, the Department's name changed to Riverside County Department of Waste Resources.