Great Disservice

You have done a great disservice to all of San Diego County by advocating that the San Diego County Board of Supervisors reverse the county Planning Commission’s decision on the proposed North County Landfills. (“Planners’ Rejection of North County Landfill Sites is Far Too Hasty,” Sept. 9).

Members of the Planning Commission realized that 90% of San Diego county’s water might be in peril should these landfills be placed at the three proposed sites. Two of the San Diego aqueduct lines adjoin the Aspen Road site in Fallbrook and two others are a couple hundred feet from Gregory Canyon in Pala. The proposed Blue Canyon landfill in Warner Springs sits at the headwaters of the San Luis Rey River, near Lake Henshaw.

Your comment that this rejection will add another year or more to the search for a new dump may be true, but isn’t adding another year a small price to pay to find a solution?

The selection of these three sites was politically motivated. The water situation was not properly evaluated. Even county staff admitted in the Environmental Impact Report that water was not the highest priority and it was weighed equally with other “mitigable or unmitigable” items such as biology and socioeconomics.

In these times of environmental awareness, it is ludicrous for those items to all have equal weighting.

There are other canyons which can be re-studied and re-evaluated using the same criteria as were used for these three canyons.

With the criteria the county has now used for capacity, these smaller canyons would probably become acceptable and we could then see if the clay and polyethylene liners and the sophisticated drainage systems will work. But let’s not play Russian roulette with our water supply.

RUTH HARBER

Valley Center