Local Elections : It’s Half-Truth vs. Half-Truth as San Marcos Trash Vote Nears : Voters Are Confused as Experts Bend Ears

On its face, it’s a simple issue of how to deal with society’s most insidious dilemma: garbage disposal. Should San Diego County start burning its trash?

And Darrell Maus can’t make up his mind.

“I’ve switched back and forth two or three times already, and I’m still not sure how I’ll vote,” said Maus, whose indecisiveness surely frustrates the political technicians who have waged the most expensive and sophisticated political campaign ever conducted in his city.

Maus is one of 11,000 voters in San Marcos who will be asked Tuesday to approve the construction of a $217-million plant to process North County’s garbage--recycling some of it, burying some of it and burning most of it.

If Maus is confused, little wonder.

Stakes Are High

It’s an election with incredible stakes--both locally and nationally--over an issue brimming on the one hand with the most basic gut-level emotions about health risks, air pollution and property rights, and on the other with scientific terms, promises and conditions probably beyond the technical comprehension of many of the voters who will have to make the decision.

Already, the two companies in partnership that are banking on voter approval have spent more than $17 million in designing the plant, only to find their investment hanging on the whims of voters trying to separate fact from fantasy and decide between two alternatives when they might not like either. Other companies with similar proposals--such as Signal Environmental Systems Inc.’s plans to build the San Diego Energy Recovery project--have retreated from their plans, choosing at the 11th hour not to make the ballot-box gamble, given the political controversy surrounding them.

If voters approve this project, the San Marcos plant could become a model for others to be built across the country, creating an alternative to landfills and simpler, so-called mass-burn trash incinerators, both of which are in disfavor among environmentalists.

If the plant is rejected and the developer can’t quickly find another host in the county, county officials will have to speed up their search for new landfill sites in North County--or expand the existing garbage dump in San Marcos, which would have to happen on a smaller scale even if the plant is approved. North County cities, frustrated by the county government’s foot-dragging on the landfill issue, have begun discussing among themselves developing and operating their own garbage dump. Greater attention might perhaps be focused on other alternatives that have been only fringe considerations, including full-blown recycling efforts coupled with composting.

Cassettes Circulated

The decision will rest with people like Darrell Maus, who has read the campaign literature from both sides and who viewed a 12-minute videocassette of campaign messages on behalf of the trash-to-energy plant--one of 600 cassettes being circulated among likely voters in San Marcos who have been identified by computers and telephone surveys as still undecided.

“One of my big concerns about burning trash is air pollution,” Maus said. “But I know that dumping garbage in the ground isn’t good, either. I feel like I’m caught between a rock and a hard place. I’ll probably end up voting my gut when I get in the voting booth.”

Proponents say the trash plant would be a state-of-the-art solution to the age-old problem of garbage disposal. The plant, they say, would not only generate millions of dollars for the City of San Marcos and the county--not to mention the private investors backing the project--but is also the most environmentally sound alternative to continued and total reliance on landfills.

Equipment at the plant would keep pollutants, including toxins, within city and county guidelines, the builder says. Should the plant exceed those limits, it would be shut down and the only ones left holding the bag would be the private investors.

Opponents argue, though, that San Marcos might become hooked on the trash plant revenue or face serious withdrawal pains should the plant fail to meet its revenue expectations. Critics also contend that even if the plant operates according to design and keeps emissions within designated limits, any pollution is bad pollution and the 6.3 tons of daily emissions into North County’s air would further exacerbate the county’s worsening smog problem.

Electricity for Homes

Proponents say the plant will generate enough electricity to serve 40,000 households. Opponents say that electricity will be more expensive than allowing San Diego Gas & Electric Co. to generate that same amount of power, since utilities are required by state law to buy alternate sources of electricity, no matter the cost.

Proponents say the plant will be responsible for recycling tons of paper, metals, plastic and other reusable material, generating not only additional income for the county but also saving precious natural resources.

Opponents say the notion of sorting out paper, plastic and metals from the back end of a garbage truck is ludicrous, and that the only effective recycling is done in the home kitchen, before the garbage is tossed.

Proponents say continued full reliance on landfills is inviting an environmental time bomb as garbage poisons the groundwater and pollutes the air.

Opponents say recently enacted state legislation requiring that landfills be equipped with emission control devices will significantly reduce the environmental harm of landfills. Moreover, they say, recycling and composting should lessen the need for landfills.

Proponents say the trash plant is ideally situated, adjacent to an existing landfill in the heart of North County’s midland, helping to keep trash-hauling costs to a minimum.

Opponents say the recycling and trash-burning center with its 300-foot-high emissions stack is a poor neighbor in the rural area and will forever change the character of the region, to the consternation not only of individual landowners and developers but also area planning groups and the City of Encinitas, which along with the City of Carlsbad has opposed the plant.

Old-Fashioned Politics

In recent days, the campaign’s focus has turned to pure, old-fashioned politics.

The opponents, who had gone by such names as North County Concerned Citizens and Citizens for Healthy Air in San Marcos, have now banded together under one campaign organization, RATE--Residents Against Toxic Environments. And RATE has tried to make hay over the fact that the developer, North County Resource Recovery Associates (NCRRA) is simply a front organization for two out-of-town companies that might not have the best interests of San Marcos at heart--Thermo Electron Corp., based near Boston, and Brown & Root of Houston, Tex.

If this project is so good, they ask rhetorically, why not build it in their backyard?

NCRRA, according to the most recent campaign disclosure statements, has spent more than $30,000 promoting its plant. In addition, the campaign committee in favor of the plant, Friends of Recycling and the Environment (FORE), has raised more than $23,000--including more than $6,000 in donations from NCRRA--to campaign for the passage of Proposition A, the trash-plant measure.

Aside from NCRRA, the largest contributions to FORE have been $2,500 each from Lusardi Construction Co. of San Marcos, generally considered the likely contractor for the project, and Herzog Contracting Corp., operator of the San Marcos landfill. In addition, according to campaign statements, more than $8,000 has been collected from individuals and companies donating less than $100 each.

With the $53,000 campaign treasury, proponents have hired political consultant Tom Shepard, pollster Bob Meadow and fund-raiser Nancy MacHutchin, the same threesome that served as the brain trust behind Roger Hedgecock’s successful 1983 mayoral campaign. Hedgecock himself had long ballyhooed the benefits of the trash plant and, as a then-county supervisor, supported the move shifting control of the landfill from the county to a private contractor, Herzog Contracting Corp., which then subcontracted to NCRRA for the trash project.

Experts vs. Experts

Not to be outscored on political savvy, the plant’s opponents have retained their own experts, including the Costa Mesa-based political consulting firm of Nelson, Ralston, Robb Communications, which has established its own reputation in California and out of state for its political work. Also working for the opponents is Arnold Steinberg, a Sherman Oaks pollster usually associated with Republican candidates in California for state Senate, the Assembly and Congress.

What was once considered a David-and-Goliath duel between the powerful NCRRA and some angry neighbors characterized as “NIMBY”--not-in-my-backyard opponents--has now emerged as a full-blown campaign with both sides armed for battle.

Last week, for instance, San Marcos City Councilman Mark Loscher, who sided with the council majority in blessing the plant’s construction, accused the suddenly well-financed opponents of trying to “buy the election.”

He noted that, in opposition to the plant, RATE raised more than $34,000 in August, $20,000 of which came from just three major investors who own more than 3,000 acres around the trash plant site on San Marcos’ southern edge, near the rural community of Elfin Forest.

Only 4% of the opposition’s money has been donated by San Marcos residents, Loscher charged.

He suggested that the developers are opposed to the plant’s construction because it would gut their opportunity to build and effectively market their future residential developments in the same neighborhood.

If the trash plant is built, he said, the City Council would be less likely to approve major housing projects in that area; if the plant is rejected, he said, the council would be hard-pressed not to allow denser residential development.

Sees Developer Plot

“Out-of-town developers are trying to buy the election for their personal gain,” Loscher groused. “What we have here is not a battle between a few homeowners and the plant developer. We now know that this is a battle over who will control the future growth and development of San Marcos. If we let the L.A. and Orange County developers grab power in San Marcos, they will turn us into an extension of Orange County suburban sprawl. I’ve never seen such a blatant attempt by outsiders to buy an election and take over a city.”

Opponents scoff at Loscher’s complaint, saying he is hysterically overreacting to the rights of existing property owners--whether they be individual landowners or large-scale developers--to protect their investment from what they call the blight of a trash incinerator that will mark San Marcos as the trash capital of North County for the next 35 to 50 years.

“It sounds to me like Mr. Loscher is making a threat, that if the voters don’t approve the trash plant, he’ll vote to approve more residential growth and then blame it on us,” said Jonathan Wiltshire, one of the leading opposition spokesmen.

Indeed, the specter of a backlash is on the minds of mobile home park residents wondering how to vote in Tuesday’s election.

Several mobile home parks were annexed by the City of San Marcos earlier this year, in part because park residents hoped the city would provide additional protection against rent increases. And now many residents have received letters from the leadership of their park associations suggesting that they vote in favor of the trash plant as a thank-you to City Hall.

“If we had not received extensive and timely assistance from the City Council and city staff, our annexation efforts would have failed. These people have been our friends. We believe they deserve our support now,” reads a letter sent to the residents of the Palomar Estates West mobile home park.

For sure, the mobile home parks are being especially courted by both sides, given their residents’ propensity to vote in municipal elections. While opponents of the trash plant have shown up with cookies and coffee, the trash plant’s supporters have wooed attendance at information nights with the promise of a catered dinner and cocktails.

One woman at a recent mobile home park meeting sponsored by the opponents said she, too, opposed the trash plant, but she refused to identify herself for fear of retribution.

“We haven’t had our rent control issue go before the City Council yet, so I think a lot of us who are opposed to the trash plant are keeping it to ourselves for now,” she said.