North County Trash Transfer Sites Urged

A North County trash-collection plan to be unveiled next week calls for the installation of seven transfer stations where trash will be dumped and sorted for recycling before being hauled to distant landfills or trash-to-energy plants.

Considerable opposition is likely from residents living near the proposed trash way stations. Strong protests also are likely to come from groups seeking to block the construction of a trash-to-energy plant in San Marcos and from those promoting more stringent recycling efforts than the county plan envisions.

Jon Rollin, project manager for the North County transfer station project, said Tuesday that the plan, circulated to North County city officials last week, has drawn little reaction either way. Most city officials contacted Tuesday reserved comment on the lengthy report until they have time to study it.

A meeting will be held at 4 p.m. Jan. 11 at Escondido City Hall for North County elected officials and technical staff members to comment on the proposal.

The report, prepared by San Francisco-based consultants Brown, Vence & Associates, recommends trash way stations be situated in Oceanside, Vista, Carlsbad, San Marcos, Escondido, Fallbrook and the San Dieguito area. Seventeen suggested sites found to be “technically feasible, environmentally suitable and acceptable to the local community” are listed.

Rollin stressed that the proposal is still in its draft stages. Final selection of the number and location of the way stations won’t occur until public presentations are made in each North County city and community, starting Jan. 15 in Fallbrook and ending Feb. 20 in Del Mar.

County supervisors will have the final say on the program and probably will tackle the decision in late March, Rollin said. After supervisors accept the report, an in-depth environmental study must be conducted on each of the selected sites, he explained.

He said the study was ordered because landfills near urban areas are quickly running out of space. The existing North County landfill south of San Marcos will be full by mid-1991, he explained, long before transfer centers can be built to house the rubbish collected from coastal and inland cities until heavy semi-trailers haul the trash to new landfills situated far from the cities served.

Oceanside Councilwoman Melba Bishop, a crusader against any program that escalates trash fees for the public, said the trash way stations are “nothing but mini-dumps which would benefit the trash-hauler, not the public. They will have to fight me if they want to locate one of those dumps in Oceanside.”

Instead of the way-station plan, she favors a single close-in landfill, in the central part of North County’s population area, with rigid curbside recycling programs to cut down drastically on the trash that must be disposed of.

Bishop also criticized the report for its lack of cost estimates.

“How can we expect to make an intelligent decision when we have no idea what this system will cost?” she said. Bishop predicted that cost efficiencies in hauling trash to distant landfills “would benefit the haulers, not the public,” and that the way-station project would cause trash-collection fees to skyrocket.

The draft report released last week contained no cost figures but a report in June contained estimates on construction, equipment and land costs amounting to $108.4 million for a seven-station project.

Rollin said the program would be paid by increases in tipping fees (charges trash collectors pay to empty their trucks), which in turn are paid by the public.

Although the transfer centers will be located in non-residential areas and will be built so that most of the dumping and loading operations occur within an enclosed building, there is little that can be done about the parade of garbage trucks that must come to the centers to dump their local loads or the number of 18-wheel trucks that will travel between the way stations and distant landfills.

Truck traffic and the lack of an aggressive recycling program are expected to be two of the main reasons for opposing the transfer-station proposal.

The 17 possible sites listed in the report are:

Escondido: A strip west of Interstate 15, south of California 78 and north of Mission Road, and a smaller site south of Washington Avenue, west of Spruce Street. Both sites are next to the Santa Fe Railway spur tracks.

San Marcos: Two sites in the hills south of Lake San Marcos along Questhaven Road and a third triangular site south of California 78 and bounded by Via Vera Cruz, Linda Vista Drive and Las Posas Road.

Vista: Two sites along Sycamore Avenue south of the Shadow Ridge development.

Carlsbad: Four sites along Palomar Airport Road, running from Camino del Norte on the west to the San Marcos city limits on the east, and a fifth site on El Camino Real, north of Palomar Airport Road and east of Palomar Airport.

Oceanside: A site north of Mission Avenue and directly east of the Oceanside Municipal Airport runway, and a larger site, divided by Loma Alta Creek, north of Oceanside Boulevard and east of El Camino Real.

Encinitas (San Dieguito area): A site at the southeast corner of the El Camino Real-Questhaven Road intersection.

Fallbrook: Two sites east of I-15 and north of Pala Road along Stewart Canyon Road.