Plan for Recycling Plant Bows to Oceanside Opposition

The developers of a massive residential and industrial project in Oceanside have pulled the plug on plans for a toxic waste recycling center, bowing to opposition from homeowners worried about the plant’s effect on everything from the environment to housing prices.

Despite that setback, officials with the firm pushing the toxics processing center, Recontek Inc. of San Diego, said Monday that they are still eagerly pursuing other sites in Oceanside.

“We clearly want to be in Oceanside, and we clearly want to find an appropriate site in Oceanside,” said Wayne Rosenbaum, a Recontek spokesman. “We believe Oceanside is a prime location. We’re going to exhaust all the possible locations in Oceanside before we begin to look at other alternatives.”

Until Friday, the firm had planned to build its 51,000-square-foot plant, which would be capable of processing 4,800 tons of toxics each month, on a 5.7-acre parcel in the Rancho del Oro Industrial Park in central Oceanside.

But officials with Rancho del Oro, in a letter to nearby homeowners who have opposed the toxics recycling center, announced they were halting all negotiations with Recontek.

Although studies indicate that the plant would not harm the environment, the fears of residents near the Oceanside Boulevard site justified the decision to suspend the deal, Rancho del Oro officials said in the letter.

“The overwhelming criticism and opposition to the proposed facility by the community has clearly been heard and is of great concern to us,” wrote Robert Stein, Rancho del Oro president. “In consideration of all the factors surrounding this proposal, we feel this is the most responsible and appropriate decision to be made.”

The $4-million plant would have been the first in the nation, backers said, to totally recycle toxics and reclaim precious metals such as gold and silver as well as other base components that could be resold. It could potentially handle waste from Los Angeles, Orange and San Diego counties, they said.

Recontek officials contend that the plant would be environmentally safe, with the only residue being water pure enough to dump in the local sewage system. Any air emissions would be trapped by scrubbers and filter systems, they said.

Nonetheless, residents near the proposed plant site, many of them home buyers in subdivisions that are part of the Rancho del Oro project, complained that the plant would lure other industries that would produce hazardous wastes.

“Recontek would have only been the tip of an iceberg,” said Paul Schumann, a Rancho del Oro resident who helped lead the fight against the plant. “If they had landed, it would have been a magnet. . . . We’d get the connotation of being the waste disposal spot for San Diego County.”

But the firm is still interested in half a dozen sites for the plant in Oceanside, according to Recontek spokesman Rosenbaum. He said the firm will not be frightened off by community opposition, noting that Recontek has already invested considerable time, effort and money on public education in Oceanside.

“More and more people in Oceanside are beginning to say, ‘Yeah, it seems to be a safe technology.’ I want to build on that basis, rather than start anew someplace else,” Rosenbaum said.

San Diego County officials are also evaluating sites for hazardous waste treatment centers as part of a continuing planning effort mandated by a new state toxics law. They have looked at Oceanside as a spot for such a plant, Rosenbaum noted.