Panel Backs Far-Reaching Recycling Plan

Moving ahead with an ambitious plan to recycle 25% of San Diego’s trash by mid-1992, a City Council committee Wednesday approved a comprehensive list of programs that represent the first city efforts to cope with its looming solid-waste crisis.

In a separate vote, the council’s Public Services and Safety Committee deferred action on a private partnership’s unsolicited bid to recycle some of the 1.3 million tons of trash generated in the city each year and haul the rest of it to one of two remote landfills.

Instead, the committee agreed to request proposals from any firms interested in competing for recycling contracts with the city. Both decisions require the approval of the full City Council.

Budgeted at $1.1 million for fiscal year 1989, the recycling effort is composed of 44 separate projects that include curb-side collection of recyclables, a white-paper recycling program in offices, increased recycling of brush, public education and data collection.

The program, at first approved last September, is seen as a partial solution to the impending closure of the city’s Miramar landfill, which will be full by 1995. The city is also involved in a joint search with county officials for a new landfill site.

The county’s Board of Supervisors, facing the expected closing of the five county-operated landfills by the late 1990s, approved an even more ambitious recycling program in December. That effort calls for recycling 30% of the 3.6 million tons of garbage produced in the county annually by 1992.

Although still in its infancy, the city’s recycling project generated discord Wednesday when council members accused city staff members of dragging their feet on what could become the centerpiece of the program--a demonstration curbside collection involving 20,000 to 30,000 residents of certain neighborhoods. If successful, the curbside collection program could be expanded citywide.

Council Members Express Surprise

Deputy Mayor Gloria McColl and Councilwoman Judy McCarty, who said that they expected the program of separating bottles, cans, newspaper and other recyclables from trash to begin this year, were surprised to learn that it is not scheduled to start until the spring of 1989.

Councilman Bruce Henderson, worried that inaction on recycling will help win passage of a citizen-backed slow-growth initiative in November, told staffers that he wants visible programs running by this fall.

“Let’s do it now. Now. N-O-W,” Henderson said. “It’s imperative we do something positive by September or October. Let’s show action.”

In addition to the curbside collection project, the first-year plan proposes:

Diverting 65,000 tons of brush from the landfill by mulching it instead.

- Expanding the Miramar landfill donation recycling center to a full-scale buy-back recycling center.

- Expanding the city’s white-paper recycling program, now operating at City Hall, to include five more city facilities and stepping up promotion of recycling through the San Diego Ecology Centre.

Programs envisioned eventually under the recycling plan include tire recycling, diversion of demolition waste--such as concrete, asphalt, wood, iron and dirt--from the landfill and reduction of waste produced at city offices.

Other projects target commercial and industrial waste producers and seek to encourage the private sector to become involved in recycling.

One such private venture is Recycle 2000, a private partnership that in May offered to handle the city’s solid-waste disposal program. Officials of the partnership, composed of Taconic Resources and Ogden Projects, proposed selling recyclable material separated by homeowners and their employees, and hauling the rest of the city’s refuse by rail to a landfill on the Campo Indian Reservation or one in Imperial County.

Richard Chase, president of Taconic Resources, told the committee that he does not oppose the competitive bid process, which his firm will enter.