Flames Fanned in North County Fight Over Trash Haulers’ Route

Municipal relations between San Marcos and Carlsbad may be going from bad to worse in the next few weeks, and it’s all over garbage.

At issue is the smoldering debate over how trash haulers, who serve 20,000 or so households along the coast and south of San Marcos, should make their way to the county landfill, which is on the southern edge of San Marcos.

Until last spring, the customary route for the trash haulers was to drive north along Rancho Santa Fe Road, skirting the eastern edge of the upscale La Costa neighborhood of Carlsbad, to Questhaven Road, and then east a short hop to the garbage dump.

Not only was it the most direct route, but the haulers didn’t have to mix it up much with San Marcos city traffic because they avoided the main city streets and intersections.

But some La Costa residents didn’t like those noisy, slow trucks chugging up Rancho Santa Fe Road 100 times a day, within earshot of their swimming pools and backyard barbecues.

There was also concern that the trucks posed a traffic hazard on the winding, hilly, two-lane road. So the Carlsbad City Council decided to enforce an existing street regulation that bans three-axled trucks from the road.

With that move, the trash haulers were forced to add nine miles--and about 20 minutes’ driving time--to each one-way trip to the dump. And the longer route increased fuel costs.

San Marcos city officials didn’t much care for the change, since the haulers would have to enter their city by way of Palomar Airport Road, which intersects Rancho Santa Fe Road in one of the city’s busiest intersections, before traveling south on Rancho Santa Fe Road to Questhaven Road.

So the San Marcos City Council countered with its own move: a $405 fee on every truck each time it entered the city. The money would be used to widen and improve the city’s streets to better handle the trash-hauling traffic.

The annual take would be $26 million or so.

“We’d have the best truck roads in the entire country,” Mayor Lee Thibadeau said, laughing.

That threat really unnerved the trash haulers, who said they would have to double or triple their rates to make up the assessment. County bureaucrats entered the picture at this point, suggesting in so many words that maybe Carlsbad ought to be more sensitive to the overall question of trash management before forcing trucks to be rerouted around a handful of La Costa homes.

So, during the late summer, the bureaucrats from San Marcos and Carlsbad sat down to make peace and come up with a compromise.

The most obvious one was to reopen an old, mile-long stretch of Rancho Santa Fe Road, which is east of the new Rancho Santa Fe Road that backs into the La Costa neighborhood, and dedicate it solely to truck traffic.

The staffs agreed to the idea, but apparently it never got off the ground and the question of whom to blame depends on whom one believes.

San Marcos’ Thibadeau said that the Carlsbad City Council never got off the dime to order improvements to the truck detour along the old stretch of Rancho Santa Fe Road.

“We’re disillusioned by their lack of action,” he said. “We met with them in September and we haven’t heard back from them since.”

Finally, he said, San Marcos called Carlsbad a couple of weeks ago to try to force the issue.

“And their attitude was that they won’t let trucks up that way until the (detour) is built, and that will take 35 business days for engineering, 30 days to bid, 30 days to award the bid and 90 days for construction. That works out more than six months,” Thibadeau said.

So to bring the matter to a showdown, Thibadeau said he wants Carlsbad to agree to open the existing Rancho Santa Fe Road to trash haulers on Jan. 31 and keep it open until the detour is completed, at which time the trash trucks would be re-routed.

The Carlsbad City Council next meets on Jan. 6, and the matter of approving the loop detour will be considered then. But if the council doesn’t buy San Marcos’ request to open the existing road on Jan. 31 until the detour is completed, then San Marcos will institute the $405-per-truck fee on Jan. 31, Thibadeau says.

“I’m not going to play anymore with them and I don’t care what they do after we levy the assessment,” he said. “We’ll just build the finest truck roads in the nation--and we’ll have the money to do it, thanks to Carlsbad.”

But Carlsbad Mayor Bud Lewis said San Marcos is the one that dropped the ball.

“We thought we had the agreement on building the detour and we sent it back to their council to ratify,” Lewis said. “We were willing weeks ago to go ahead with the loop (detour) and we told them we could have it done in 90 days. But we never heard back from them.”

Lewis said the loop construction still can be completed in 90 days, compared to the 180 days that Thibadeau predicts, but he said there’s no way he’ll allow the trash trucks to use the primary Rancho Santa Fe Road beginning Jan. 31.

Thibadeau complained that a lot of other truck traffic is using Rancho Santa Fe Road despite the ban, and that only trash trucks are being targeted by the city.

Lewis answers that the other truck traffic is headed for projects within the City of Carlsbad and has no other choice but to use Rancho Santa Fe Road.

Had San Marcos formally agreed to the loop detour construction a couple of months ago, Lewis said, the issue would be moot now.

Thibadeau’s retort: “They never did anything (send the compromise back to San Marcos for approval) of the sorts. He’s very uninformed, which tells me we should have gone ahead and passed the damn (assessment) ordinance to begin with.”

Lewis: “Mr. Thibadeau can say what he wants to about us dragging our feet, but the agreement has been on their side of the net.”

And what if San Marcos adopts the $405-per-truck assessment?

“Mr. Thibadeau has to do what he thinks is best for his constituents,” Lewis said. “He has his constituents over there, and we’re doing what we think is best over here.”

MP, Los Angeles Times