Seeks to Offset Environmentalist Efforts : Diverse Group Forms to Support Trash-Burning Plant

A somewhat diverse citizens committee has been organized to back the controversial SANDER trash-burning plant.

San Diegans for a Clean Environment, announced Tuesday, consists of physicians, representatives of the building and waste-hauling industries, and a labor-management group.

The committee is led by San Diego Chamber of Commerce President Lee Grissom, who says the chamber has backed the trash-burning project since 1982, when it was planned for Chula Vista.

To Counter Environmentalists

The new committee’s chief function is to counter efforts by environmentalists to place an initiative on the November ballot that could scuttle the project.

Signal Environmental Systems hopes to build the mammoth trash incinerator at the Miramar landfill.

Grissom pointed to city studies that the landfill will be used up by 1995 or earlier and added that no new sites have been identified. If the clean-air initiative qualifies for the ballot and is approved by the voters, the plant would likely be torpedoed, he said, leaving “no alternative solutions to landfills.”

Grissom said a “primary concern” of the committee is that Signal has put about $4 million into the project and has indicated that it will drop the project if the initiative passes.

‘Significant Questions’

Grissom said the environmentalists, known as San Diegans for Clean Air, have raised “significant questions” regarding the plant but a mandatory environmental review process should provide the answers.

Other members of the new committee include Joyce Urban, former executive director of the I Love a Clean San Diego anti-litter group, and Bob Dingeman, former president of the Scripps Ranch Civic Assn. Also on the panel are Dr. Ralph Ocampo, Dr. Mort Jorgenson and Dr. Charles Edwards, president of Scripps Clinic and Research Foundation.

And Art Lujan, manager of the San Diego County Building Trades Council; Larry Peeples, chairman of the San Diego Coalition for Environmental and Economic Balance, a management-labor council, and John Lusignan, president of the San Diego County Waste Haulers Assn., also are members of the committee.