6 North County Sites in Running for Landfill

County officials Monday announced that six remote sites are under consideration for a new landfill in North County--all of them far away from the more populous and politically potent parts of the region.

“We’d like to deal in the realm of reality rather than wasting time on sites we know are not acceptable to people,” said Ted Marioncelli, an aide to North County Supervisor John MacDonald, who has made finding a landfill a top priority. “Lawsuits only add time to the process.”

Five public meetings will be held in the next two weeks before solid-waste specialists in the Department of Public Works rank the six sites in order of preference and submit the ranking in April to the Board of Supervisors.

500-Acre Sites

The sites, each about 500 acres, include two near Warner Springs, two northeast of Ramona, one in Trujillo Canyon in Pala, and one in Rainbow Canyon north of Fallbrook.

Only the Rainbow Canyon site is west of Interstate 15, even though most of North County’s garbage is produced west of that highway. The sites northeast of Ramona are in the Cleveland National Forest, which would require negotiations with federal officials.

A plan to add a seventh potential site that is within the Santa Ysabel Indian Reservation was dropped because of opposition from tribal leaders, Marioncelli said.

“We can’t do anything without their cooperation,” he said.

No longer under consideration are three sites that raised considerable civic opposition when announced in mid-1986: land west of I-15 across from Lawrence Welk’s Country Club Village, land on Vista’s southern edge near Carlsbad, and land west of I-15 near Deer Springs Road, north of Escondido and San Marcos.

Elected officials in Oceanside, Vista, San Marcos and Escondido have all gone on record opposing landfills in their cities and vowing to fight any move by the county government. Lawsuits have already been filed against a proposed trash-to-energy plant approved by San Marcos voters last fall.

The six sites are all within the unincorporated area governed by the Board of Supervisors, which will have the chore of selecting a final site from among the six.

Current Sites Filling

North County currently has two landfills--in Ramona and San Marcos--but both are rapidly filling.

A landfill in Bonsall closed in 1985. The San Marcos trash-to-energy plant, even if it can overcome political, legal, financial and technical hurdles, is not designed to accommodate North County’s full load of garbage.

Officials would like a new landfill site to be open within four years--about the time the San Marcos landfill is slated to reach capacity.

A new landfill will need approval from the Board of Supervisors, the Regional Water Quality Control Board, the San Diego County Air Pollution Control District and the California Waste Management Board.

The six sites were chosen from a field of 50 sites (within a designated North County search area) by a county technical advisory committee and a consulting firm, SCS Engineers of Long Beach, hired in 1987. The finalists were selected on various technical criteria, including terrain and ground water proximity.

Even before the list was formally announced, word had leaked to some community activists and opposition had begun to form.

“Everyone in Rainbow will be against a landfill,” said Dale Huntington, a member of the Rainbow planning board, which advises the county on land-use issues. “We want to keep our area rural, with no outsiders, no progress, no change at all, least of all a landfill.”

Huntington said Rainbow residents are prepared to argue that the site in the canyon, west of I-15 and north of Mission Road, is the “worst of the six sites they could possibly select” because it would require trucks to travel up a steep grade.

Lee Weddington, a member of the Ramona planning board, said the two sites northeast of Ramona, in the Boden Canyon in the Cleveland National Forest, may be far enough away from populated areas to minimize the opposition.

“I don’t think (there will) be much of a reaction from Ramona,” Weddington said. “It’s too far outside of Ramona. If people can’t see it, their tendency to oppose it decreases.”

Selecting a new landfill site is part of an overall plan to establish “transfer” stations for hauling garbage and to encourage recycling.

The first of the public meetings is set for Wednesday from 7-9 p.m. at Orange Glen High School, Escondido. Supervisors MacDonald and Susan Golding will be the hosts.

After that: Thursday, 7-9 p.m., Maie Ellis School, Fallbrook; March 21, 6:30-8:30 p.m., Warner Union School, Warner Springs; March 23, 7-9 p.m., Pauma Valley Community Center, Pauma Valley; and March 28, 7-9 p.m., Carlsbad Public Safety Center, Carlsbad.