Royce’s Surprise Move Aids Waste-Plant Foes : Anaheim State Senator Introduces Bill Amended to Limit Building of Energy-Producing Facilities

In a wide- open legislative battle being waged here over controversial waste-to-energy plants, opponents have gained an unexpected ally: Sen. Edward R. Royce (R-Anaheim).

Royce this week amended a bill that did not remotely pertain to waste incinerators to prohibit the operation of any large waste-to-energy plant within three miles of a school, hospital, nursing home, day-care center or food-processing plant.

The measure, which was quickly nicknamed the “Three Mile Island bill,” surprised even Assemblyman Larry Stirling (R-San Diego), who has made opposition to the construction of a proposed 60-megawatt Sander plant in San Diego’s Kearney Mesa one of his top legislative objectives this year.

Persuaded by Miller Brewing

Royce’s bill, which lobbyists for the Miller Brewing Co. acknowledge they persuaded him to introduce, would effectively ensure that any large plant that would generate 50 or more megawatts of electricity could be built only in a remote, rural area.

Royce, who insists he does not oppose the concept of waste-to-energy plants, says that this is precisely what he had in mind.

Because little is known about the air pollution trash-to-energy plants will cause, “it doesn’t make good environmental sense” to locate “some of the largest (waste-to-energy) plants in the U.S. . . . in environmentally sensitive areas,” Royce said.

“In our urban areas in California, we have some of the dirtiest air in the U.S. today,” he added.

Four Projects Affected

Spokesmen for Miller Brewing have said that they fear the effect the air pollution from the waste incinerator would have on the brewing of beer.

Royce’s bill would affect four proposed waste-to-energy plants in California, three of which already have begun the months-long California Energy Commission application process: the 60-megawatt Sander project, an 80-megawatt plant in Irwindale and an 80-megawatt plant in Redwood City.

A proposed plant at Puente Hills also might have to meet the site requirement, depending on its size.

However, 30 smaller plants in various stages of planning around the state, including one in San Marcos, would not be affected.

The measure was introduced Monday and had been scheduled for a hearing earlier this week before the Senate Local Government Committee. But votes on it and five other waste-to-energy bills were postponed until next Wednesday.

Should Royce’s bill survive its first legislative test and eventually win Senate approval, legislative observers say, it probably will have an uphill battle in the Assembly Natural Resources Committee, where bills aimed at stalling such plants have fared poorly so far.

Although there is only one tiny experimental plant operating in the state, waste-to-energy facilities have become the focus of one of the liveliest and most multifaceted environmental debates in recent memory. Legislators say the topic also has been one of the most heavily lobbied of the session.

So far, state lawmakers have introduced 11 bills, advocating virtually every extreme plus many positions in between. They range from a moratorium or ban in the smog-choked Los Angeles Basin until the air is clean to measures that would strip away zoning and approval prerogatives of local governments that might stand in the way of a waste-to-energy project.

Backers of waste-to-energy plants admit that the energy crisis that prompted the technology has long since passed. But they say the high-tech incinerators are needed as an alternative to landfills for the 36.5 million tons of garbage Californians throw away annually.

But critics say the plants are relatively dirty sources of energy and there is too little known about toxic chemicals likely to be released from them.

Little has been heard from builders and environmental groups, traditional foes in such debates.

Environmentalists Debate

Within some environmental groups, the issue has touched off internal disputes between those concerned about ground-water contamination beneath rapidly filling landfills and others who are worried more about waste incinerators polluting the air.

The Miller Brewing Co., trying anything it can to halt construction of the waste-to-energy plant near its Irwindale brewery, has been in the center of the fray, often forming unlikely alliances with school districts.

Stirling, who says it is “logically flawed . . . to take the pollution out of the ground and put it into the air,” said Thursday that he still hopes to enact a moratorium on the waste-to-energy plant construction until more air pollution studies are done.

He said he had “nursed back to life” his bill and would soon be asking the Assembly committee that has voted against it twice to take one more look.

He said he hopes that Miller, already a supporter of his bill, will be more active in lobbying for it when he takes it to the Natural Resources Committee again.

San Diego lobbyist Richard Ratcliffe said a lot of cities like San Diego want to see waste-to-energy plants encouraged, just to provide more options in disposing of the millions of tons of garbage generated each year.

“It is extremely frustrating” to waste-to-energy plant supporters, Ratcliffe said, that a technology that grew out of the need for energy now has to be sold in a highly charged political climate as a good way to get rid of “garbage and ugly stuff that people don’t want to talk about.”

Frank Mazanec, director of Signal Cos., which wants to build the Sander project, also believes it is sometimes difficult to interject reason into the emotionally charged debate. Royce’s bill, although easily recognizable as Miller’s latest strategy, is an example, Mazanec said.

As part of the application process required by the Energy Commission, the Sander project’s proponents have already had to address potential health effects on schools, hospitals, nursing homes and day-care centers.

Bill ‘Misdirected’

“The fact is there are sensitive individuals to any kind of industrial facilities that ought to be taken under consideration” Mazanec said. “The system already does that. . . . So, why do we need legislation?”

Mazanec said, too, that Royce’s bill is misdirected. “There could be a school or nursing home a mile from the facility, but the wind may not blow in that direction,” he added.

Energy Commission records show that nearly 15,000 San Diego schoolchildren attend classes at 20 schools within a three-mile radius--the area set out in Royce’s bill--of the proposed plant.

In addition, there are five nursing homes, two hospitals and 19 day-care centers within that area.

The Energy Commission, which refers to such facilities as “sensitive receptors,” does not list food-processing plants in its applications. But Chris Tooker, the Energy Commission’s project manager for the Sander plant, said it is likely that there is at least one of those near the Kearny Mesa facility, too.

Tooker said that a man who operates a food-processing plant came up to him to express concerns about the waste incinerator at the close of an Energy Commission hearing Tuesday night.