State Bond Financing OKd for Kearny Mesa Trash-to-Energy Plant

A state board Wednesday authorized up to $306 million in state bond financing for a trash-to-energy plant on Kearny Mesa that would convert 30% of San Diego County’s garbage into electricity.

A site for the plant, near the Miramar Naval Air Station, will be determined after Navy and city officials complete a land swap.

So far, Signal RESCO Inc., which plans to process more than 2,200 tons of garbage a day at the proposed plant, has been spared the type of vocal opposition that threatens to stall, or kill altogether, a smaller garbage-burning, electricity-generating plant planned for San Marcos.

But the San Diego Energy Recovery Project (SANDER), a joint city-county agency that selected the Kearny Mesa location, has had to bounce its proposal from neighborhood to neighborhood during the last several years as residents of Chula Vista, National City and Southeast San Diego all protested having a trash-burning plant in their area.

It is expected that the plant would generate more than 61 megawatts of electricity daily, enough power to meet the needs of more than 60,000 San Diego households.

The California Pollution Control Financing Authority’s unanimous approval of bond financing for the San Diego project is an early but important step for Signal RESCO, which hopes to start constructing the plant in 1987 and complete it by June, 1989.

The state bond funds will save the company, a division of San Diego-based Signal Cos. Inc., millions of dollars in financing charges, company spokesman Frank Mazanec said.

Mazanec, the project’s manager, said it is impossible to estimate the savings from bond financing.

“It’s not nickels and dimes,” he added, however. “What you get here is tax-exempt status and all the savings associated with that.”

The project will need the California Energy Commission’s approval, and the application to that agency is scheduled to be submitted within a few months, Mazanec said.