Cities Seek Trash-to-Energy Plant Althernatives : Economics: Cheaper disposal methods are sought as 3 cities voice concern over proposed facility’s cost.

Three North County cities are seeking to find a cheaper alternative to the county’s proposed trash-to-energy plant in San Marcos, claiming that the $250-million plant will raise residents’ trash collection bills by 400%.

Escondido, Encinitas and Carlsbad city administrators have been holding informal talks to explore ways of disposing of solid waste other than burning it in the proposed county-sponsored plant proposed for a site near the lone North County landfill, a dump site expected to be filled within the next few years.

Wednesday night, the Escondido and Encinitas city councils were scheduled to give their staffs the authority to search for less-polluting and less-costly means of disposing of North County cities’ garbage. Carlsbad is expected to take the same step next week.

Tipping fees, the price haulers must pay to deposit trash in a county landfill, were recently increased to $18 a ton and are projected to go up to $45 a ton by the year 2000, Jack Anderson, deputy Escondido city manager, said.

“If the trash-burning plant is ever built, those fees could double, up to $90 a ton or more,” Anderson said. “Burning is a very costly way of disposing of trash.”

Vince Biondo, Carlsbad city attorney, said that “we owe it to our citizens to explore every possible alternative (to the trash-to-energy plant) in the private sector, unless someone can talk the county back to fiscal sanity.”

Biondo charged that the county-commissioned trash-to-energy plant would increase residents’ trash collection fees by 400%, “and there must be more economic alternatives out there. If we look into it and find out that there are no viable alternatives, we can at least say that we did what we could.”

Biondo and Anderson also pointed out that all San Diego Gas & Electric Co. customers will be subsidizing the North County trash-burning plant through higher utility bills. The developer of the proposed trash-to-energy plant, North County Resource Recovery Associates, has negotiated a contract with SDG&E; to sell power generated at the plant to the utility at rates much higher than the going prices, they said.

Biondo said that SDG&E; buys most of its power at an average price of 2.6 cents a kilowatt hour, while the NCRRA contract calls for the utility to pay 7.8 cents per kilowatt hour.

“The net result is to make the people in South County help subsidize this North County project to the tune of $100 million in higher utility bills,” Biondo said.

The three cities and other groups have filed 14 lawsuits against the county and operators of the proposed trash-burning plant, citing the negative environmental impacts of air pollution and ash disposal and challenging the contract between the county and the private operators.

Anderson said there has been discussion of a joint-powers authority that would include member cities and permit joint financing of any viable trash disposal plan. He said he hopes that other neighboring cities will join the effort to find a cheaper, cleaner method of trash disposal.

“One obvious alternative is to export our trash out of the county,” Anderson pointed out. “Obviously, from the county’s experience in trying to find new landfill sites in North County, siting a local landfill is not an easy task.”

A private landfill operation at Eagle Mountain in Riverside County is one possible site under consideration, Anderson said.