Port Rejects Proposal to Make Idle Cannery a Recycling Plant
Commissioners for the San Diego Unified Port District on Tuesday turned down a proposal by the Ralston Purina Co. to turn its idle tuna cannery off Harbor Drive into a major citywide recycling center, saying it would cause too much traffic, would be a poor use of bay-front property and has nothing to do with any marine-related industry.
A company lawyer, in an interview later, said Ralston Purina will explore other options, including suing the Port District.
The company maintains that it has a legal right to use the land and buildings it leases from the Port District, a right the district says applies only if Ralston Purina intends to bring in a marine-related industrial activity. Such activity, the district says, does not include waste recycling.
Leased Until 2014
Though Ralston Purina shut down its Van Camp Seafood Co. cannery at the 10th Avenue Marina Terminal in June, 1984, leaving the facility mostly vacant, it is paying the Port District about $850,000 a year under a lease that runs until the end of March, 2014.
The company, which has paid the Port District about $3.4 million in lease payments since shutting the cannery, has been seeking to recoup its losses.
Last year, it proposed a plan that basically involved turning the property over to a real estate developer, who would then sublease parts of the buildings. The Port District, feeling the proposal was too vague and fearful of speculation on its property, turned down that plan.
On Tuesday, Ralston Purina publicly unveiled a new project.
Hopeful of taking advantage of the city of San Diego’s proposed solid-waste management system--a cornerstone of which is massive, citywide recycling--Ralston Purina wanted to use part of its 985,397-square-foot, 30-acre property as a recycling and transfer facility.
For example, the company said, it could sell its lease outright or sublease its property to one of the 20 firms that have told the city they would like to run the waste management system.
Materials that could be recycled, such as metals, plastics, paper and glass, would be separated and placed in large cargo containers, which then would be put on ships and sold to Pacific Rim countries, said David E. Chanover, a San Diego lawyer representing Ralston Purina.
Big Enough for County, Too
Any leftover trash that could be recycled, he said, would be shipped by rail to the Imperial Valley for disposal.
Chanover said the facility would be big enough to accommodate not only the city but the entire county as well. He also said that all 20 firms interested in the city’s contract have been contacted and told about the old cannery site, but he added that a recycling facility might also be operated by Ralston Purina or a company subsidiary.
The proposal, Chanover told the commissioners, was not only “incredibly timely” but he said it would help the area’s economy, mainly by bringing ships into San Diego and keeping the San Diego recycling business from heading north to the Port of Los Angeles. And, he said, Ralston Purina could not explore the project further unless it received conceptual approval from the Port District.
But the Board of Port Commissioners and the Port District’s administrative staff weren’t buying any of it.
First, a report prepared by Port Director Don Nay maintains that most of the materials brought to the cannery site at 1025 E. Harbor Drive wouldn’t be recycled at all, but would have to be sent back out by truck or railroad to a landfill, a contention Ralston Purina’s attorneys disputed.
The report also says that the number of trucks traveling to and from the recycling center would significantly affect Harbor Drive, particularly in light of the opening next year of the $160-million Convention Center paid for by the Port District. And, according to Nay, only five of the 20 firms interested in bidding on the city’s waste contract think they would use a processing facility such as the one proposed by Ralston Purina.
Not Marine-Related
But, perhaps most important, the staff report says that the main activity embodied in the Ralston Purina plan has nothing to do with the main requirement called for in the lease: that the primary use of the property be given over to “marine-related industrial activities.”
“It is believed that the principal activity proposed by Ralston is waste disposal,” the report says.
Commissioners also criticized the affect traffic would have on the Port District’s growing tourist facilities along Harbor Drive, called the cannery location a poor one for a large recycling center, said the city’s recycling program is not dependent on using Port land, and said that even if the project was approved, there would be no guarantee that the buyer of the recycled material would use ships to take it away.
And then there were the politics of it all.
Commissioner Bill Rick, who represents the city of San Diego on the seven-member board, said, “This has the markings of a . . . NIMBY (not-in-my-back-yard syndrome).”
“To act precipitously on this one is a death wish as far as I’m concerned,” he said.
