Longtime American Canyon residents remember the grassy mound near the wetlands that border town as the spot where trucks hauled garbage from Napa, American Canyon and Vallejo until the mid-1990s.

Last weekend, more than 80 residents visited set foot on the former landfill, now a quiet knoll with few visitors except water fowl and the herd of goats brought in during the summer months to keep the vegetation down.

The National Trails Day outing was organized as the city and the Napa-Vallejo Waste Management Authority, the agency that owns the 121-acre site. The two are in negotiations to open the site to the public, with a possibility that American Canyon residents could for the first time gain regular access to the Napa River this summer.

Last Saturday, a dozen volunteers made sure visitors remained on the flat service road, away from the mound where leachate is collected and methane is harvested to produce electricity. Walkers and bikers made a loop around the former landfill that state officials permanently closed in 2008.

“It’s nice,” said Patricia Oro as she and her husband David, their 2-year old daughter, Mya, and family dog, Sienna, walked on a gravel road with views of the Napa River, wetlands and the city. “I didn’t know they had a trail like this in American Canyon,” she said.

 Among the hikers was American Canyon Councilwoman Joan Bennett, who supports the efforts to open the road to the public.

“It was not only beautiful,” she said of the mostly flat hike, “It was low-impact.”

Robyn Myers, a member of the city’s open space committee, came with her dogs, Korina and Kalani. She helped organize the hike and said she envisions the area as a multi-use park. While the plan develops, she hopes the area could be open to hikers and kayakers.

“It’d be nice to have access to the river,” she said.

The loop around the old landfill could become a spur of a new section of the San Francisco Bay Trail , which is planned to run through the city.

Fencing in the fill

The Napa-Vallejo Waste Management Authority acquired the landfill from a private company in 1993, Cave said. While it quit accepting waste in 1995, the landfill did accept dirt from the Highway 29-Trancas Street underpass project from 2002 to 2004.

A private company continues to produce electricity for PG&E from the methane produced at the site. In addition, the authority and the city of American Canyon have an agreement to have landfill methane gas piped to the city’s wastewater treatment plant, where three 70-kilowatt micro-turbines have been built to produce power.

To open the area as a public facility, the city needs an easement on land that belongs to an amalgam of agencies, including the waste management authority and the California State Lands Commission.

Fences would then have to be erected around the landfill, according to city officials and Trent Cave, manager of the Napa-Vallejo Waste Management Authority.

The Napa County Regional Park and Open Space District could use a state grant to pay for a fence along the north, west and south sides, explained district General Manager John Woodbury. The city of American Canyon, possibly with some grant money, would then fund construction of a fence along the east side, which faces homes along Wetlands Edge Road.