What leaves San Diego County as a disposal problem comes back as a monthly royalty payment — growing for 30 years, with no public money spent to make it happen.
See what this means for San Diego ↓A plain-language overview of what the Carbotura partnership means for San Diego County residents. No technical jargon, no formulas. If you want the full detail, the other documents in this package have everything — but this page tells you what matters to your community.
The key point: a traditional landfill takes your materials and charges you a fee. Carbotura takes your materials, charges a smaller fee, and then pays you back a growing share of what it earns — every month, for decades. From Year 2 onwards, what Carbotura pays back exceeds what the county pays in, per tonne.
Where a qualifying legacy landfill has been identified, the CSA can include the Exogenesis™ Royalty as an additional agreement appended to the primary contract. It doesn't change any of the primary CSA terms — it is a bonus stream for a specific separate activity: mining and processing buried material rather than accepting fresh feedstock.
Candidate sites for San Diego County. West Miramar Sanitary Landfill is approaching an estimated closure around 2031 and is on a post-closure trajectory. Republic Services facilities — Sycamore, Otay, and Borrego — carry legacy inventory that may qualify. Site-specific eligibility is confirmed through a Waste Characterization Study before any Exogenesis™ commitment is included in the CSA.
In plain terms: as Miramar closes and the county faces the post-closure care obligation, Exogenesis™ converts the buried material into a manufactured product and returns a second royalty stream to the county for that work. The landfill becomes restorable land; the buried material becomes industrial product; the county is paid for both while the process runs.
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Factory locations are proposed — exact sites confirmed during the planning process after the partnership agreement is signed.
Carbotura’s factories receive the same everyday materials that currently go to the landfill — household rubbish, commercial waste, packaging — and convert them into manufactured materials that industry can use. Think of it as a sophisticated recycling and conversion plant, but one that can handle materials that ordinary recycling can’t.
The conversion process is largely self-powered — the factory generates most of the energy it needs from the materials themselves, so it doesn’t put significant demand on the county’s power grid. Nothing is burned in the traditional sense, and nothing ends up in landfill. The factories are designed to look and operate like industrial manufacturing facilities, not like waste sites.
Yes — the county pays a processing fee per tonne of materials it sends to the factory. This fee is set in the agreement at $100 per tonne in Year 1, and grows at a fixed agreed rate each year. Think of it like paying the landfill a gate fee, except the rate is agreed in advance and locked in, so there are no surprises when private landfill operators adjust their pricing.
Here’s the critical difference from a landfill: Carbotura takes that same fee and pays a growing share of it back to the county as a royalty — starting about 13 months after operations begin. From Year 2 onwards, what comes back in royalty payments exceeds what goes out in processing fees per tonne. The county ends up in a better financial position than under the current landfill arrangement.
The county does not need to fund construction, staffing, operations, or maintenance. Carbotura covers all of that.
About 13 months after the factory first receives materials — this is how the agreement is structured, and it’s a deliberate feature, not a delay. The royalty is calculated on each month’s materials, then paid out 13 months later, on a rolling basis. So once the first payment arrives in Month 14, payments continue every month thereafter.
In practical terms: if the first factory opens in late 2028, the county starts receiving royalty payments in late 2029. Those payments then grow every year for the entire duration of the partnership — a minimum of 30 years, and potentially much longer.
The estimated total royalty paid back to the county over the 30-year minimum for the full four-factory network is around $1.09 billion. This is an estimate based on current projections and is not a guarantee, but it gives a sense of the scale of the long-term financial benefit.
Carbotura does — entirely. The company funds, designs, builds, and operates all facilities under what’s called a Build-Own-Operate model. Carbotura holds full ownership of the factories throughout the 30-year partnership.
San Diego County doesn’t need to issue bonds, take on debt, hire contractors, or manage construction. The county’s role is straightforward: send the materials and collect the royalty. Everything else is Carbotura’s responsibility.
If anything goes wrong with the factory — performance issues, technical problems, operational disruptions — that’s Carbotura’s problem to fix, not the county’s. The agreement is designed to protect the county from operational risk.
The partnership agreement runs for a minimum of 30 years from when the first factory opens. After Year 28, either party can give formal notice that they want to wind down the arrangement. If notice is given in Year 28, the partnership ends at Year 30. If no notice is given, the partnership — and the royalty payments — simply continue.
Early exit before Year 28 is not available under the standard agreement terms. This is intentional: the 30-year commitment is what allows Carbotura to secure the financing to build the factories in the first place. The stability of the agreement is what makes the economics work for both sides.
The county’s commitment is also limited: send an agreed volume of materials each year, pay the processing fee per tonne, and cooperate with the planning process to get the factories built. Beyond that, the county’s obligations are minimal.
The numbers on this page come from the San Diego County Assumption Registry (locked July 2026) and the three preceding package documents. A quick guide to confidence levels:
LOCKED — contractually fixed: processing fee $100/tonne Year 1; royalty formula; 30-year minimum; locked growth rates.
VERIFIED — confirmed from public sources: Miramar gate rate $102–108/tonne (City of SD FY2026 fee schedule); Miramar closure ~2031 (CalRecycle permit); operator names.
ESTIMATED — modelled from confirmed data: county-wide materials volume (~8,767 TPD from CalRecycle 2022); $125/tonne all-in disposal cost; carbon avoidance; water recovery; employment.
Royalty totals (~$1.09B) are illustrative projections under the current formula model. A formula correction made in July 2026 (Corpus Release 28) would produce higher royalty figures when the financial model is rerun. These figures are not contractual commitments. Contracted rates and volumes are confirmed during the planning phase after the partnership agreement is signed.