Big Guns Join Fight Against Landfill in North County

County plans to build a new North County landfill in a canyon between Rainbow and Fallbrook brought out 400 angry residents of the two rural communities in opposition backed by the U.S. Marine Corps.

At the Tuesday meeting called to rally opposition to the proposed Aspen Road landfill site, Charlotte Joswick read a letter from Brig. Gen. R.H. Huckaby, commanding general of Camp Pendleton Marine Base, expressing “serious concern” about the location of the dump and threatening to take “whatever measures necessary” to prevent pollution of the Marine base’s water supply.

The base, the country’s largest Marine training facility, gets all its water from wells. Pollution of the ground water from an upstream landfill would be an “unacceptable risk,” the commander said.

The Fallbrook landfill site is one of three finalists in the county Public Works Department selection process designed to acquire one--or all three--as a replacement for the rapidly filling county landfill in San Marcos. The other finalists are Blue Canyon near Warner Springs and Gregory Canyon near Pala.

The Fallbrook-area landfill opponents, organized as Fallbrook/Rainbow Interested in Environment: No Dump Site, or FRIENDS, cheered the Marine Corps support in their efforts to persuade county officials to keep the proposed landfill out of their back yards.

“What really irritated people was that the environmental impact report (on the three landfill sites) told us nothing because it said nothing,” Ed Schuffert, vice chairman of the Rainbow Planning Group, said. “They refuse to consider alternatives,” such as moving North County waste to a desert disposal site. Instead, he said, they insist on “putting a dump where people are.”

Out-of-county disposal would cost about three times as much as a local landfill, county Public Works Department staff said.

The unincorporated village of Rainbow recently completed an update of its community plan, Schuffert said, and the proposed landfill “ruins everything we have just done.”

Locals call the proposed Aspen Road landfill “Mt. Trashmore” because it would rise to more than 1,500 feet--several hundred feet above the nearby hills.

They have positioned a red beacon at the ultimate height of the landfill and have polled surrounding residents to determine how many would be able to see the dump from their homes.

“You can see it from all over town,” said Gordon Tinker, a FRIENDS member and the general manager of the Fallbrook Public Utilities District.

Tinker called Camp Pendleton “a powerful ally” in the battle to stop development of the Aspen Road site. The Marine base has rights to 15,000 acre-feet of the county’s imported water if its underground sources become polluted, Tinker said.

Frank McMillan and his family have a very personal reason to oppose an Aspen Road landfill: The new home he built himself and moved into just last Saturday is within what would be the new landfill.

McMillan said that the county issued a building permit for his 3,200-square-foot house in October, l988, when the site was among 22 contenders for the landfill.

“I didn’t find out that I was in the landfill until about a week and a half ago,” McMillan said, “and I’m going to fight it right up to the courthouse steps.”

An appraisal of his new home and 5-acre lot set the value at $475,000, he said, “but I will have to fight to get a fair price for it if they start eminent domain action” and condemn the property, he said.

A group of Fallbrook residents recently completed a study of the county’s environmental impact report on the Aspen Road landfill site and said they found about 60 discrepancies in it. Among the problems with the site are its proximity to two barrels of the aqueduct and its location across a part of Rainbow Creek that flows into the Santa Margarita River, the chief source of ground water for Camp Pendleton.

The county Public Works Department plans to hold public hearings, tentatively scheduled for the week of March 12, in the areas of the three landfill candidates, a department spokesman said.

After that, the county Planning Commission will hold hearings, and the County Board of Supervisors will make the final decision on whether to select one or all of the sites for landfills.

Nancy Allen, chief aide to Supervisor John MacDonald, said that MacDonald could not interfere with the site-selection process or listen to the oral complaints of his North County constituents until the matter is before the entire board.

However, she said, he can accept letters and other written materials that he can distribute to fellow supervisors so that all board members have access to the same information. He has received many written comments, Allen said, and expects to receive a lot more.