Final Face-Off Due in San Marcos on Trash Power Plant

Richard Chase was hired by a Boston-based trash collection and disposal company in March, 1981, to figure out a way to dispose of garbage without taking it to a landfill.

He concluded--as others have --that, with the right combination of existing technology, garbage safely could be burned to generate electricity.

But, where?

Privately produced electricity fetches a higher price in San Diego County than elsewhere in the country, Chase said; there is enough space at the existing county landfill here to build the plant, and North County faces the problem of how to dispose of its trash, because the only other landfill serving the region is scheduled to close this year.

So, in December, 1982--after considering locations all over the United States--Chase resolved to build his plant in a rural neighborhood on the southern fringe of San Marcos.

And that’s when Bruce Hamilton, who happened to live in that very neighborhood, resolved to stop Richard Chase.

Opposition Rallies

Hamilton, vice president of an Oceanside electronics company and a resident of the tight-knit and upscale community of Elfin Forest, was as responsible as anyone for rallying his neighbors against Chase’s proposal. The opposition slowly spread into Escondido, La Costa, Rancho Santa Fe, Del Dios, Lake San Marcos and the city of San Marcos itself; earlier this month, the Carlsbad City Council voted to oppose the project as premature. Hamilton and his supporters say the plant would pollute North County’s air, increase congestion on area streets and reduce the value of their property.

This Wednesday night, after an incredible 40 hours of public discussion before the city’s Planning Commission and City Council, Chase and Hamilton will be asked to wrap up two years of debate with separate 20-minute concluding arguments.

And then the City Council will begin deliberations into whether this innocuous little city in northern San Diego County should become host to California’s first trash-fired power plant, designed to burn everyday garbage at 2,000 degrees to create steam to drive turbines to generate electricity.

Chase wants the trash-to-energy plant--euphemistically, a “resource recovery center”--operating in less than 2 1/2 years. After recyclable material is hand-picked from conveyor belts, about 1,000 tons of trash would be burned daily, generating enough electricity to serve about 40,000 homes, he says.

Negotiating With County

And in case he is not allowed to build it in the city, he already has begun the process of asking the county’s approval to construct it 500 feet to the west of the proposed site--just outside the city’s jurisdiction. Either way, Chase says, he is confident the facility will be built.

Hamilton and his growing number of supporters have pledged to block the plant at either location by whatever legal means necessary, including the possibility of a public vote or lawsuits.

The question before the City Council this week is whether it should uphold the Planning Commission’s approval of the trash plant last month, or whether it should overturn that decision. Four votes of the five-member City Council are needed to overturn the Planning Commission.

No other city in California has yet approved construction of a trash-to-energy plant, although there are several proposals to build them around the state.

A Canadian-based company wants to build a trash-burning power plant in a huge gravel pit in the city of Irwindale, east of Los Angeles. The plant would burn three times as much garbage as the one proposed for construction here, and the Irwindale City Council and Redevelopment Agency already have sold $395 million in bonds to enable the company to build it. The project has yet to receive the necessary permits for construction, however.

Another Plan Falters

In contrast, the City Council of Compton, just south of Los Angeles, rejected last August plans by a consortium of trash haulers to build a trash-burning power plant in that city. The mayor said his vote was influenced by the amount of public opposition to it, while a councilman noted that the promoters of the project may have tried to oversell it, reflected by their plans to build a restaurant atop the smokestack.

In San Diego, meanwhile, a joint city-county plan to build a trash-to-energy plant adjacent to the Miramar landfill near Interstate 805 and Clairemont Mesa Boulevard is moving ahead slowly with negotiations to lease Navy property for the project.

Potential sites for the $200 million facility were considered in Chula Vista, National City and Southeast San Diego before being rejected in the face of heavy public opposition in those areas.

Chase said the sponsors of his project, North County Resource Recovery Associates (NCRRA), would build the project with private money, and that the facility would be expected to make a profit for the company in addition to serving as a model so the parent company could build similar facilities elsewhere in the United States.

“The central point we will be making on Wednesday evening is that the City Council will be making a choice between three alternatives: one, to have the project built in their city; two, to have it built in the county (unincorporated area); or three, to expand and continue to use the county landfill” on Questhaven Road near Elfin Forest, Chase said.

Plant’s Benefits Touted

Chase has argued that the city would benefit by having the facility built in San Marcos rather than the county because it could then govern its operation and reap some of the financial benefits, including a share of the plant’s income.

And, his company has insisted, a trash-buring plant is better than continued use of the landfill because of the risks of ground water contamination and the build-up of methane gas and toxic waste.

Chase said that despite the number of people who have turned out for the public hearings--between 100 and 200 for each of the nine public sessions so far--he is surprised that the opposition hasn’t been greater. Most of the opponents, he said, live in the immediate vicinity of the trash plant site.

“No matter how well you plan a project, you’ll always get a ‘nimby’ (an acronym for “not in my back yard”) group,” Chase said Friday.

The challenge to the City Council, he said, “is for it to sort the facts from the emotion. There are a lot of people who are very emotionally opposed to the project, but they have a complete lack of facts. There hasn’t been a single expert of any sort addressing the issues from a factual basis. The closest thing they’ve had to an expert on air quality is a man who is a nuclear engineer, and while nuclear power plants may have a lot of problems, emissions into the air is not one of them.”

Hamilton said his group, North County Concerned Citizens, will drop the technical arguments come Wednesday night in favor of suggesting to the City Council that it ought to consider the political ramifications of its decision.

Public Opposition

“To non-technical people, as are the members of the City Council, conflicting testimony (on such issues as air quality) is very difficult to deal with. So, the way for them to resolve it is to act in the way the voters would want them to.”

Hamilton contends that, despite at least one public opinion poll to the contrary, most of the voters in San Marcos oppose the plant’s construction. He said public opposition should be reason enough for the trash plant to be rejected.

“The fact is, we have a landfill that is viable, so what we need to do is look at future solutions. We don’t need to rush into anything. The City Council should treat this like a murder trial: if they have any doubts about the safety or benefits of this plant, they should vote it down. The risks are high and the rewards are iffy.”

Hamilton said there is no room for compromise on the issue. “By the time you impose enough conditions to make it safe, there would be so many of them, the plant simply couldn’t operate. Conditions are just scabs on the conscience of elected officials.”

Hamilton said he would also argue to the council that its decision will set the future development pattern for that part of the city, in terms of whether that area takes an industrial or residential flavor.

“We’ll be asking the council on Wednesday to ‘net out’ the issues, to decide what on the balance is the best for the city,” Hamilton said.

Seeks Political Strength

Now that the 2-year-old effort to lobby the City Council is drawing to an end, would he have done anything different in organizing it?

He said that while his group was careful not to peak public opposition to the plant prematurely, before the matter was to go to the City Council, he wishes he had organized greater political strength to fight the project.

He noted that a number of neighborhoods just outside the city’s boundaries--most prominently, Lake San Marcos--have been politically frustrated in their opposition to the trash plant because they don’t carry the leverage of city voters. Most of the people who have spoken in opposition to the plant live outside the city limits.

The public’s arguments on the merits of the trash plant concluded Thursday night. Those who favor the plant have talked about how the emissions from the 300-foot-high stack will be colorless, odorless and will fall within strict California air quality guidelines. For those emissions, such as dioxins, that have no state or federal guidelines, standards have been established for this particular plant that will ensure the safety of nearby residents, according to proponents of the project.

“They need to have the opportunity to succeed,” one supporter of the plant said of NCRRA’s efforts to build it. “Unless we try, we won’t solve our energy problems and our dumping problems. If it doesn’t work, these people (opponents of the plant) will be down here (at City Hall) to shut it down. And I can sleep at night knowing that,” said the speaker, Jim Hernandez.

Said another supporter, Nicole Pappas, “In time, these plants will be all over this country. (It is a matter of) the greatest good for the greatest number.”

Opponents used the last night of public comment to touch on subjects ranging from air pollution to human error to spirituality.

One speaker made reference to smog in the Riverside-San Bernardino region and remarked, “I’m sure every single stack there is regulated. Pollution, no matter how regulated, is still pollution.”

Others drew specific reference to a somewhat similar trash-burning plant in Akron, Ohio, which caught on fire--killing three workers--last month after the ignition of sawdust soaked with highly-flammable solvents. The critics said that even with promises and guarantees that the local plant would be operated safely, the human element still leaves open the possibility of accidents.

The Rev. Hal Lingerman warned the council against “endangering others lives in the name of progress. To vote for this menace would be a betrayal of your commitment to serve the well-being of the voters you represent.”