SUNOL -- Just the thought of having a 600-ton-a-day composting facility anywhere near her home has Mary Peters quite upset.

"We're organizing our protest," said Peters, a member of Stop the Dump in Sunol. "We've been making some headway on getting this stopped."

She wants an end to plans for a 40-acre composting facility off Interstate 680 on Andrade Road, two miles southwest of Sunol. The Alameda County Waste Management Authority is considering spending $5.5 million to help Materials Recovery Inc. build a center to help recycle some of the 2,600 tons of food and organic matter thrown away daily in Alameda County.

A draft environmental review addressing land use, traffic, odor and other factors was completed late last year and is being circulated until Jan. 31.

Twenty-seven percent of waste dumped in Alameda County is considered food or green waste. The county's goal is to divert 75 percent of total waste from landfills by 2010, a goal approved by voters as part of the Alameda County Waste Reduction and Recycling Act of 1990.

"The voters of Alameda County wanted greater diversion and its our mission to fulfill that charter amendment," said Brian Mathews, the Alameda County Waste Management Authority's project manager for the proposed composting facility.

There are no composting sites in the county. Mathews said a facility would help ensure a long-term commitment to meet voter-mandated recycling goals. Alameda County now ships its organic compostable waste outside the county.

The proposed facility could process a maximum of about 1.2 million pounds of compost a day and would produce about 45 round-trips by trucks a day. It would start with about 200 tons a day. It would take two to three years to reach capacity.

Residents are concerned and say there are too many unknowns. Their main worries are odor, pollutants and the possibility of attracting scavenger animals.

Stop the Dump members have hired an environmental consultant to analyze the environmental report and "pursue the legal route with an attorney," Peters said.

County Supervisor Gail Steele attended a Stop the Dump meeting this month and said residents have legitimate concerns. She hopes the final environmental report addresses those issues.

"I intend to get very involved in this and make sure what the facts are," Steele said.

The unincorporated community of Sunol straddles the district boundaries of Steele and Supervisor Scott Haggerty. Chris Gray, Haggerty's chief of staff, said they have heard many resident complaints.

"They think the project is not in the right place," Gray said.

He said there are still many steps between the draft report and final project approval, including a final environmental report with a new public comment period.

Bill Schreeder, president of Material Recovery and a consultant with the Browning-Ferris Industries Newby Island Sanitary Landfill in San Jose, which contains a composting center, said he is not shocked by the reaction to the Sunol project.

"It is fairly typical to have concern from some whether you are proposing a compost facility or a car wash," he said. "There are going to be people who do not like the site."

He said the San Jose facility handles about 400 tons of compostable waste daily, is very responsive to complaints and has a set of "best management practices" they follow religiously as to not disturb folks. Those practices include things like not turning over a compost heap unless the wind is blowing into the Bay.

Whether or not Material Recovery's new site is approved, it appears companies are interested in bringing a compost facility to Alameda County. Waste Management of Alameda County is now considering building its own composting facility near its Altamont landfill. Schreeder said he has also heard Republic Services, which runs the Vasco Road landfill, is considering one.

Composting sites are rare in the Bay Area. Z-Best Composting has a 156-acre facility outside Gilroy and takes in about 650 tons a day of green waste and 250 tons of food waste, said Michael Gross, of Zenker Road Waste Resource Management, which manages it.

It mainly takes material from Santa Clara County, but also from as far away as Oakland and Hollister. Food waste is not just food scraps, but includes packaging and even plastic silverware: "Everything you would find in a restaurant Dumpster," he said.

The facility is in a very rural area with the closest neighbor a half-mile away.

"You want a site that is far away from residential areas," Gross said.