Anchorage Daily News

On a recent weekday afternoon at Point Woronzof, a man stood on a soggy hill surrounded by piles of wood chips chewed from leftover two-by-fours and dead Hillside trees.

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He wore a baseball cap and an eye patch, surveying the mounds of steaming leaves and shredded children's books, wet black soil and splintered pallets that blanket acres of land between the airport and Inlet.

Meet Pete Kinneen. This is the compost facility he has run on city-owned land for the past five years.

The city says he needs to pick up his piles and leave.

"He's now squatting on our property without permission and legal authority," Mayor Mark Begich said.

The mayor said Kinneen, whose $4,750-a-year lease expired in October, ignores warnings and breaks rules by stockpiling trash and spilling onto other people's property.

Kinneen counters that the mayor is suddenly trying to run him off to help a political supporter and old business partner build a monopoly in the Anchorage garbage industry.

The city refuses to take any more of Kinneen's checks and he, in turn, refuses to leave.

You may have guessed by now: The two sides have gone to court.

THE EDGE OF TOWN

Drive on Northern Lights Boulevard beyond the turn into Anchorage's international airport, past the "restricted access area" signs and the gravel curbs where people stop to watch the jets roar overhead. Past the sewage plant all the way to the end of the road. Now take a right.

It was here -- neighboring the Clitheroe substance abuse treatment center -- that former engineer John Dean in 1993 started a nonprofit compost operation where people could bring scrap wood, yard clippings and other biodegradable waste for less than it would cost to go to the landfill.

Think of composting as recycling: Rubbish that might otherwise take up space at the dump turned into something useful, such as soil for gardening.

Dean leased the land from the city. Soon, his nonprofit, Environmental Recycling Inc., was turning organic waste into bags of compost called "Alaska Gold."

The operation wasn't without a bump or two.

In a March 2001 memo, former Heritage Land Bank land manager Art Eash wrote about an "infestation of flies" and ravens dropping fish heads near the Clitheroe site.

The next month, Eash wrote to then-Mayor George Wuerch saying Dean was ill and looking for someone to replace him. That successor was Pete Kinneen, who began running the compost yard in 2002.

WHERE'S THE LINE?

Before taking over the compost plant, Kinneen had worked in recycling for years, he said.

According to a 1994 newspaper story, the Matanuska-Susitna Borough repeatedly issued stop-work orders to shut down a landfill Kinneen ran.

Begich said the city of Anchorage has clashed repeatedly with Kinneen as well.

Where Kinneen sees a valuable recycling service, Begich sees a compost yard that has started to turn into an unauthorized dump.

"We have warned him multiple times, verbally and written, about his handling of the services out there and what he has done without permission in destroying public lands," Begich said.

Begich pointed to pair of aerial photos on file at City Hall that show the piles of compost expanding between 2002 and 2006. The shots show Kinneen spread beyond the boundaries of his leased land, according to the mayor.

Kinneen, in turn, said that after years of peace the city's attitude toward him only soured when Alaska Waste, a trash business co-owned by former Begich business partner Jon Rubini, entered the picture. He challenges the city to come show him where he's crossed the line.

"If there's some kind of a survey line that was missed, we'd be happy to know what it is and work within that boundary."

While the mayor said Kinneen has destroyed a buffer between the compost facility and the city Coastal Trail, Kinneen said he just made it higher.

BEGICH AND RUBINI

Around the same time that Kinneen took over the composting business in 2002, Begich -- a real estate agent and former Assemblyman -- worked for developers Rubini and Leonard Hyde when they bought downtown land that later became home to a National Park Service building.

As part of his commission, Begich was given a small stake in two Midtown office buildings, which Begich said he has since sold.

Begich ran for mayor in 2003 and won. He listed Rubini as one of seven deputy campaign treasurers -- people who can accept checks on a candidate's behalf.

Kinneen said Rubini and Hyde's Alaska Waste wants to take over his business and other trash services.

On June 28, 2006, Alaska Waste wrote to the city to lay out a plan for the trash company to offer curbside recycling services to two-thirds of Anchorage households, as long as the company could take over the remaining 20 percent of the residential garbage market now handled by the city.

The proposal also called for Alaska Waste to start a compost operation. In return, the city would raise landfill fees, with more than half the extra money going to Alaska Waste.

To Kinneen, this proposal is part of the reason the city won't renew his lease.

"They want us out, and (to) have the mayor's financial and political ally, Jon Rubini, complete his acquiring a monopoly on the garbage industry in Anchorage," he said.

Begich said Kinneen is "full of bull."

The Alaska Waste letter came about six weeks after the city sent out a request for someone to run a new compost facility -- at the landfill in Eagle River.

Begich said Rubini and Hyde's offer was a bad deal and he rejected it.

"If anything, Alaska Waste is not happy with us at all," he said.

Rubini was out of the country and unavailable for interviews, a spokesman said.

Riley Snell, a JL Properties vice president and Alaska Waste board member, said he never talked to anyone at the city about Kinneen's compost facility being competition for Alaska Waste, or about shutting it down. He said he couldn't speak for Rubini, but said Rubini had never mentioned any such conversation to him.

Kinneen also points to a letter Begich wrote to state regulators in February supporting -- or at least not objecting to -- a push by Alaska Waste to deregulate commercial garbage rates across the state. His letter was addressed to the Regulatory Commission of Alaska, and carbon-copied to Rubini.

Why?

Begich said that was a long time ago but he assumes Rubini asked for the letter. He said the city wasn't necessarily supporting deregulation of commercial rates, just saying it wasn't opposed to the change.

He said he mostly wanted the city to be on the record saying, in the same letter, that the city-owned garbage utility -- Solid Waste Services -- didn't want Alaska Waste to do business in its district without permission.

"We have a monopoly in our district, we don't want them in it," he said.

Solid Waste Services' customers are mostly in downtown, Midtown and part of East Anchorage. Begich said he will not sell the company to Rubini or anyone else.

Asked what his relationship with Rubini is like today, Begich said the two haven't talked for a long time.

"I think he feels we've taken his ideas ... and we're doing them ourselves."

SMOKING SOIL

When things like leaves and manure and wood chips compost, the microbial reaction creates heat. On a recent afternoon, Kinneen climbed a leafy mound and dug his hands into the dark soil.

Steam poured from the hole he left behind.

"You could cook a turkey in it," he said. "A 25-pound turkey."

Kinneen said people bring brush and branches to the compost plant by the truckload. Nearby, there was a pile of drywall and a pile of children's books donated to the Salvation Army, which for some reason couldn't be sold, he said.

Kinneen said there's a plan for everything at the yard and both piles could be recycled. So could a nearby mound of cremated pet bones -- 500 beloved beings, he called them -- that came from a crematorium.

Kinneen sued the city in September.

He is asking for at least $750,000 to $1 million in damages and accuses the city of slander.

"This is just a huge, huge positive thing for recycling. And they're trying to kill it. Why?" he said.

In a September letter explaining why the city didn't plan to renew his lease, Begich essentially says Kinneen killed his own chances. Before he was mayor, Begich was a landlord, and he writes about Kinneen like a problem tenant in need of eviction, citing: "The large volume of non-composted waste piles which have accumulated on the property, along with associated potential clean-up costs."

"We'll see him in court" Begich said earlier this month.

The case is headed to trial in December 2008.

Find Kyle Hopkins' political blog online at adn.com/alaskapolitics or call him at 257-4334.