The site is located within the city limits of San Jose, California at the western terminus of Dixon Landing Road.
It is the terminus for waste for all of San Jose (62%), Santa Clara (14%), Milpitas (10%), Cupertino (5%), Los Altos (2%) and other cities (7%).
[3] Materials that pass through the gate of NISL include waste that is disposed in the landfill; clean soil that is used for cover and for temporary roadways; construction and demolition (C&D) debris that is sorted, recycled, and processed for re-use both on-site and elsewhere; and materials that are used for alternative daily cover (ADC), which include but are not limited to biosolids, processed C&D debris, contaminated soil, green waste, and organic material from the on-site composting operations.
Later a settlement agreement between the City of Milpitas, City of San Jose, Browning-Ferris Industries, and the International Disposal Company of California resulted in some odor mitigation strategies, such as relocation of the composting area to the westernmost section of the landfill to reduce the odor impact.
In August 2012, Republic Services announced the Newby Island Resource Recovery Park located on the same site, the world's largest recycling operation.
Newby Island houses the local hauling company, recyclery, composting facility and landfill.
[4] Despite appeals and protests from the City of Milpitas and its citizens, the permit was approved by the San Jose Planning commission on December 7, 2016.
[10] In 2016, Republic Services settled a class-action lawsuit over the alleged landfill odor pollution.
Odor mitigation will include updating the gas collection system and also modifying the composting operation to use forced air static piles.
Milpitas also decided not to select Republic Services (the owner of the Newby island facility) to do garbage collections.