Communities Question Worth of Planned Trash-Burning Power Plant

They took their places in a Tierrasanta elementary school auditorium last week like feuding in-laws at a wedding--on either side, antagonists in San Diego’s escalating war over a giant waste-to-energy plant proposed for three miles away.

On the left sat the silver-haired refugee from New Jersey, the garbage capital of the East: Janet Brown, the leader of the opposition. All around her sat skeptics, critics and other allies, many of them marshaled by Brown.

On the right paced another New Jersey emigre--Frank Mazanec, project manager for the proposed plant. Seated near him were his bespectacled public-relations man and the city and county bureaucrats, the hours of their workdays stretching into double digits.

In between sprawled the ranks of the undecided, puzzling over the intricacies of waste streams, nitrogen oxide emissions and acid gas scrubbers. Brown and Mazanec had turned out to compete for their hearts and minds.

“It very much takes on the air of a political campaign,” remarked Mazanec, regional director for Signal Environmental Systems. “I think (waste-to-energy battles) are coming more and more into that category. You might argue that it’s sort of a grass-roots-type campaign.”

The proposition this time is a garbage burner proposed for a corner of the Miramar landfill off Clairemont Mesa Drive and California 163. If approved, it would incinerate 2,250 tons of trash a day, seven days a week. It would generate enough electricity for 60,000 homes.

The facility is being promoted by city and county officials and Signal as an answer to San Diego’s smoldering garbage woes: The city’s principal landfill, Miramar, has only 14 years of space left. No new landfills are planned; finding a site for one is increasingly tough.

But the plant would be one of San Diego’s biggest individual polluters, regional air-pollution officials say. In particular, it would top other polluters in the area of chemical contaminants for which there are not yet federal or state standards.

Those pollutants are called “non-criteria pollutants,” because there are no set criteria establishing safe or unsafe levels. Among them are highly toxic chemical compounds called dioxins, known to cause birth defects and suspected of causing cancer.

The company’s insistence that the pollutants would pose no appreciable health threat has become the central issue in the debate over the plant.

“When I was a child, I had an asbestos lining in my coat--because they told us that would keep us warm,” Brown said in an interview last week. “Look what they told us about mercury--remember all those women during the war painting watches? What about all those soldiers and people looking up at the atomic testing, (being told) ‘Don’t worry about it. It’s all right.’

“Well, I think we should start asking questions and not be as gullible,” Brown added, laying out stacks of reports meticulously underlined in yellow marker. “Let’s hope we’re learning by our past mistakes. . . . We should be getting a little bit smarter.”

Mazanec countered: “It’s easy to say no, rather than to believe (the facts). You’re turning around the background of the nuclear industry and all the other concerns that go along with it.

” . . . All of those people that I would call the purists, the environmental purists, you’re going to have the core of that group that is going to be opposed,” Mazanec went on. “And they tend to be the activists.”

In Tierrasanta last week, the California Energy Commission held its first public workshop on the San Diego Energy Recovery Project (SANDER). The hearing was a first step in at least a 12-month evaluation of Signal’s four-volume application for a permit to build.

In coming months, the commission staff will collect data, confer with regulators, ask Signal for more information and hold public hearings. It will evaluate SANDER’s environmental impact and finally recommend that the commission approve or deny the permit.

The commission, which scrutinizes all large power plant proposals, has never denied a permit at this advanced stage of the process. But the final decision on the plant will fall to the San Diego City Council, which has approved the plant in concept by a 9-0 vote.

“What’s happened in the last six months is that the idea and concept of resource recovery has become a reality,” said Bernie Rhinerson, the former council aide directing Signal’s public-relations campaign on behalf of the Stoorza Co. “There’s an application pending, there are emissions numbers available, there’s a picture of the plant. There’s a target to shoot at, I guess.”

Elsewhere in San Diego County, the Board of Supervisors last June gave final approval to another privately run trash-fired plant in San Marcos. The plant is to use a different technology than SANDER and is to be considerably smaller, burning 1,200 tons of trash a day.

The vote came after three years of controversy, community opposition and legal challenges. Residents there say that plant, too, poses an environmental threat, although its environmental impact report has withstood court challenge.

In the case of SANDER, Signal would build the plant on 43 acres just north of Clairemont Mesa Boulevard and Mercury Drive. The structure, originally priced at $200 million, would include a single, 195-foot stack that would empty out at about 600 feet above sea level.

The plant would burn 2,250 tons of unseparated trash a day, producing an estimated 600 tons of ash, which would be put in the Miramar landfill. It would require an average of 2 million gallons a day of water for cooling.

City and county officials say the site is ideal--next to the landfill and highways, with minimal trucking on neighborhood streets. Attempts to locate the plant in National City and Chula Vista failed because of neighborhood opposition and logistical problems.

Among the regulated pollutants that would come out of the plant are sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide, particulate matter and non-methane hydrocarbons. It would generate 2,600 tons a year of nitrogen oxide, the pollutant considered primarily responsible for smog.

Also to be released are a range of non-criteria pollutants, including dioxins and furans, compounds widely suspected of causing cancer. Mercury, aluminum, copper, iron and other materials would also come out of the stack.

In its application, Signal said that none of the regulated emissions would exceed state or federal standards. In fact, Signal says that switching from landfill dumping to burning would reduce the amount of dust blowing off the landfill by 3,820 tons each year.

Signal also performed a study of the health risk posed by the non-criteria pollutants. It concluded that the plant would create an additional “cancer burden” of less than one additional case in a population of 1 million.

“Every health risk study in the nation has come to the same conclusion, that there is no significant risk associated with waste-to-energy facilities,” Mazanec said. “ . . . But that doesn’t stop the opposition from saying ‘a catastrophe waiting to happen’ and all the cliches. . . .

“I don’t think you’re ever going to convince the Jan Browns of the world. In any population there’s that core of environmental purists that are not looking at any sort of trade-offs, that you’re never going to convince.”

Brown grew up in northern New Jersey, not far from the chemical and petrochemical strip she remembers as “Cancer Alley.” Nearing retirement, she and her husband began looking for a place to retire. Three and a half years ago, they settled in San Diego.

Then last March, Brown’s husband returned from a Tierrasanta Community Council meeting with news that the city was considering a waste-to-energy plant nearby. Mrs. Brown remembered a trash plant near a friend’s home in Hemstead, N.Y.--and she remembered how it had been shut down, in part because of problems with pollution.

“It could be the same situation as Hemstead,” she said last week, recalling her initial reaction. “Meaning not the same type of plant, but meaning that these people were sold the idea that this was the answer to their garbage problem--but it turned out not to be.”

So Brown took her concerns to her condominium owners’ association and from there to the Tierrasanta Women’s Club. Finding supporters, she formed a nonprofit corporation and named it Citizens Advocating a Safe Environment (CASE).

At her urging, Assemblyman Larry Stirling (R-San Diego) wrote to the state Air Resources Board for information about emissions. Back came a letter stating that “the facility will emit several substances which are only beginning to be understood and for which no air quality standards nor controls have yet been developed.”

Stirling now opposes putting SANDER on the landfill site. Last month, he introduced legislation for a moratorium on waste-plant construction until the Air Resources Board concludes studies of the health risk posed by the plants’ pollutants.

Brown also contacted U.S. Rep. Bill Lowery (R-San Diego), who wrote to the federal Environmental Protection Agency for information. Back came a letter saying the EPA had no regulations governing dioxin and furan emissions and would not know if they are hazardous for at least a year.

“You can see why we’re concerned,” Brown said. “Really, what it boils down to is they know so little. What I have found out about resource recovery facilities is that in some cases it’s not what you know about them you have to be worried about. It’s what you don’t know.”

Brown says she also wants assurances that the ash will not be hazardous--and will not end up turning the Miramar landfill into a hazardous-waste dump. She wants to know if the plant will quickly become obsolete, leaving the city with a dinosaur on its hands.

She also worries about pollutants settling on lawns and gardens in a city where rain does not come for months on end. She wonders what will happen when there is a temperature inversion: Will the pollution hang over the city like a blanket?

Brown wants the city to put the project on hold until questions about emissions and health effects are answered. Meanwhile, she says city officials should look into other answers to the garbage problem, such as recycling, composting and simply reducing waste.

“They haven’t looked far enough,” Brown said of the city and county officials who endorsed the idea of waste-to-energy back in the late 1970s. “It’s a quick fix for a problem that will not go away. Answers have to come. And we have enough time to wait for them.”

Frank Mazanec and Bernie Rhinerson say they already have answers.

Waste-to-energy technology is proven, they say, with more than 300 so-called mass-burn plants worldwide and 38 in the United States built over 30 years. Signal alone has five plants on line along the East Coast, and nine more in the planning stages around the country, in what is increasingly a lucrative and expanding field.

They say their health risk estimates are conservative and based on an extensive study. Though there is no standard method for measuring risk from non-criteria pollutants, they say they used the method approved by the California Department of Health Services.

They point out that a recent New York State study shows dioxin emissions at one of Signal’s newest plants at an unprecedented low. And they say their air-pollution control technology makes the risk from emissions “infinitesimally small.”

What’s more, they say San Diego has no realistic options.

Landfill space is running out, and siting a new landfill these days can take many years, they point out. Attempts to site new ones in the city have foundered on citizen opposition--in Tierrasanta, for example, about five years back.

As for alternatives, they say none is as reliable as a mass-burn waste-to-energy plant like SANDER. They say other technologies have been plagued by shortcomings, and programs like recycling realistically address only a small portion of all waste.

“The conclusion virtually across the country is that it’s good in little applications but you can’t use it to handle 70% or 80% of the waste in San Diego,” said Mazanec, referring to recycling, composting and other suggestions. “So there is no other alternative. It’s very, very easy to be negative.”

For that reason, Mazanec has come to feel after five years at Signal that siting plants is “80 or 90% political and 10% technical.” He says Signal’s campaign is tailored to providing a lot of information and drawing the public into the process.

Mazanec now lives in San Diego County and spends many evenings driving the length of the city to appear at forums and public meetings. He comes with a slide show and an encyclopedic knowledge of the technology, and with Rhinerson at his right hand.

“Sometimes I wish it was a little more of a constructive working together in those meetings, rather than--I don’t want to call it a dog and pony show,” Mazanec said. “I love nothing better than someone bringing up a good point and talking about ways that we can possibly make an improvement on it.”

One technique that Mazanec and Rhinerson said has proved helpful in the past is working with a citizens’ advisory commission like the one for SANDER. And indeed, members of the 21-person group say they have studiously suspended judgment until they eventually vote on whether to recommend that the City Council approve the project.

Last week, the group forwarded to the California Energy Commission a list of recommendations after a Signal-sponsored trip during which several members toured Signal plants in Baltimore and Westchester County, N.Y. The proposals included a recommendation for a Signal-supported fund to cover any damage to property values or public health. There was also a proposal for an ongoing program of blood sampling “to track the long-term effect of pollutants emanating from the stack.”

The commission members also suggested monitoring the trash for radiation. They proposed a committee of independent professionals to review all environmental impact data monthly.

There were 20 recommendations in all.

“We’ve done our homework, looked into the projects, heard the technical data, toured plants, and I have spent a lot of time just reading,” said Deanna Spehn, editor of the Tierra Times and a Tierrasanta resident who lives about a mile and a half from the proposed plant. Spehn figures she has spent 300 unpaid hours working on the project since her appointment to the commission 18 months ago by then-City Councilman Dick Murphy.

“We obviously have to do something about the trash,” she said. “It’s not going to go away. I think a lot of people are reacting purely emotionally to something they haven’t done a lot of research into.

“I refuse to jump in on one side or the other.”

Deborah Wetter is president of the San Carlos Area Council, one of several community councils that voted early on to oppose the plant because of unanswered questions. But last week Wetter said she had begun to reconsider that position after hearing representatives of Signal, the county, the Air Pollution Control District, the citizens’ advisory commission and the opposition forces speak at a recent forum.

“It was incredibly informative,” Wetter said. “As a result, I personally and a number of other members have some real questions on both sides. I feel personally less comfortable in taking a stand.

“All I can say is there are enough of us that have questions that we’re going to bring it back up. . . . It’s not something to go into lightly and it’s also not simple. If there were simple answers, we would have taken them and run with it.”

Last week, at the California Energy Commission workshop in Tierrasanta, frustration with the complexity of the issues overflowed in often hostile questions fired at members of the commission staff. Finally, Chris Tooker, project manager for the staff, took the microphone.

“We have just begun our evaluation,” he explained patiently, asking the audience of about 100 to remember that the staff consists of independent professionals. “We have flagged some issues here. Please bear with us. We have just begun our process.”