Trash-to-Energy Plant Decision Delayed : Move by San Marcos City Council Follows a Stormy Public Session

Approval of the controversial trash-to-energy plant in San Marcos has been put off a second time by the San Marcos City Council to give its staff time to evaluate an 11th-hour rush of additional environmental reports prepared by both proponents and opponents of the project.

The delay came Tuesday night following what was the most passionate of four public meetings in recent weeks debating the benefits and liabilities of the $217-million project, billed by its developer as the best thing since sliced bread and by critics as a spewer of deadly chemicals.

At one point during the acrimonious four-hour meeting, Richard Chase, managing director of the would-be builder of the project, vented his frustration with critics by characterizing his opponents as “dishonest” and suffering from “moral and intellectual bankruptcy.”

His remark--and the ensuing catcalls from the audience--came while he was denouncing the plant’s critics for failing to defend their position that landfills were a better alternative than trash-burning power plants. The health risks of landfills compared to trash-burning plants has emerged as a significant issue in the debate over the construction of the trash plant, which would have a lesser dependence on the landfill.

‘Don’t Have the Guts’

“They don’t have the guts to stand up here and defend what they’re promoting,” he said angrily to the council after the plant’s opponents declined an opportunity to discuss the relative merits of the landfill. Turning to the audience, he said, “We’re not promoting the landfill. You are. So you tell us why it’s good and we’ll tell you why it’s bad.”

The City Council, which clearly is leaning in favor of the project, said it would meet again next Tuesday night and probably vote on the issue after resolving some environmental questions with its staff.

Critics of the project, ranging from area residents to the Sierra Club to the cities of Carlsbad and Encinitas, pleaded again with the council--as they had previously--to delay a decision on the project for six months to allow continued study of the plant’s health risk, along with studying the risk of continued full-scale use of the county-owned San Marcos landfill.

Opponents noted that the state Department of Health Services and the county Air Pollution Control District had not yet completed their reviews of the most recent health risk assessment of the plant. Those reviews are expected to be completed by early September.

But Councilman Mark Loscher countered that the plant’s approval was not dependent on the state’s or county’s review of the health study, and he won the support of two other council members to delay the decision just long enough for the City Hall staff and consultants to review some of the newest issues.

Different Sides

Only Councilwoman Pia Harris has indicated her opposition to the plant; Mayor Lee Thibadeau and Councilman Corky Smith have long championed it, while Loscher, through his questioning, has indicated his support of it.

(Dr. Lionel Burton, the fifth council member and a longtime supporter of the plant, resigned his seat Tuesday night to take a two-year post as a physician at the Lyndon Baines Johnson Medical Center in Pago Pago, American Samoa. The council said it would appoint a replacement to the balance of his two-year term when it meets Aug. 25.)

If, as expected, the City Council approves the project, the issue will then go before San Marcos voters on Sept. 15 for final approval.

Tuesday night, consultants for both sides presented their arguments on the risks and safety of the trash-burning plant and criticized one another for their findings.

“There is no absolutely, totally perfect way to get rid of trash . . . ,” Chase said. But he said that the risks of the project are minimal and the risks of a landfill are enormous.

One of Chase’s consultants, David Kellermeyer, said that if the facts, figures and assumptions used by a consultant hired by the cities of Carlsbad and Encinitas were to be believed, persons would die of toxic shock from lead poisoning “every time you read the newspaper.” That consultant, Leland Attaway, criticized Kellermeyer’s report as too filled with questions and holes to be used as a basis for a decision by the council.

Dwight Worden, an environmental attorney hired by the city of Encinitas, told the council that based on his reading of Attaway’s report, “You ought to be worried--a lot--(because) this thing is a lot more dangerous than previously stated.”

He said that when he hired Attaway on behalf of Encinitas and Carlsbad to independently evaluate the health risk assessment of the trash plant, “I told him to let the chips fall where they may” and that he didn’t try to prejudice the findings.

Chase countered, later in the evening, “If you believe Mr. Worden, who’s a very nice man, that he didn’t give his consultant some direction, then I’d like to sell you a bridge in Brooklyn.”

Other speakers criticized the city for not taking a harder look at the environmental consequences of a possible landfill expansion when the City of San Marcos prepared its environmental impact report for the plant. The plant’s construction would likely encourage the county--which is hard-pressed to find new landfills in North County--to expand the San Marcos landfill, but that likelihood was overlooked by the city, several speakers argued.

A number of area property owners threatened or alluded to lawsuits against the city for loss of property value should the plant be built--lawsuits which Thibadeau later acknowledged as a virtual certainty.