6 Women Unite in Tenacious Fight Against Dump : Landfill: The ‘Trash Bags’ win attention for their passionate opposition to garbage-disposal giant’s designs on Gregory Canyon.

As a whole, they look like a proper bunch of suburban ladies, these six, as they sit around the patio table sipping coffee and nibbling Danish as the hummingbirds hover frenetically overhead. “My daughter,” crows one, “is a homecoming queen finalist!”

The others coo their congratulations, but it’s not shared interest in children--or bridge, or gardening, or careers or cooking--that brings them together.

Instead, they talk passionately about throwing a wrench in the plans of the world’s largest garbage disposal company to build a landfill next door.

These are women on a mission--and, although they’re not always respected for their methods and approach, they nonetheless are turning heads and winning attention.

Meet the Trash Bags, a nickname they’re trying out on themselves--an eclectic bunch who, they acknowledge, have little else in common beyond garbage. But they’ve bonded in their challenge of county bureaucracy and the company that wants to build a garbage landfill in a canyon alongside California 76 and the San Luis Rey River in Pala.

Together, they’ve formed the core opposition to the so-called Gregory Canyon landfill. They’ve hounded bureaucrats for files, then spent hundreds of hour poring over them, in search of facts and figures that would challenge the county’s logic in even considering the site. They’ve pestered the prospective developer, Waste Management of California, about technical findings and conclusions. They’ve orchestrated presentations to county officials--even to the point of setting something on fire once to make a point. And they’ve written or telephoned just about everyone they can think of to make sure that a landfill won’t be approved in their bucolic valley.

One woman even wrote the Pope--and got an answer.

A look at their backgrounds reveals how these suburban householders developed the steel that makes them formidable political foes.

The one who wrote to the Pope was 62-year-old Ruth Harber, a Jewish woman who as a youngster hid out in Belgium during World War II, much like Anne Frank--and read the English dictionary from cover to cover to learn a new language. And she resents that a county supervisor, however flippantly, referred to her as illiterate, because clearly she is not. Later in life, she was the secretary for Joseph Alioto, then the trust-busting attorney in San Francisco before he became the city’s mayor.

Another of the women, Carol Metzger, used to edit Mr. Magoo comic books and decipher cables from Time magazine correspondents overseas during World War II and, as a script writer, make sure Ronald Reagan didn’t muff his lines as the announcer on the General Electric Theater more than 25 years ago. She belongs to Mensa, the high-IQ organization. She has raced production sports cars at Riverside Raceway. Today she is 67 and owns an avocado ranch that borders the site of the proposed landfill.

Another, Trella Hill, 53, taught English for six years to the children of international diplomats at the Cairo American College in Egypt. Now retired as an elementary school reading specialist, she and her husband designed their dream home in Pala--and was told later that her view of Gregory Canyon would be in the bowels of the trash dump itself.

Then there’s Diana Rice, the youngest of the bunch at 34, who oversees her family’s 160-acre ranch and groves. She framed her environmental consciousness while attending art school in San Francisco and returned to San Diego only to find what she calls an appalling lack of environmental ethics and conviction here.

And 50-year-old Ginny Buonarati (“Just pronounce it ‘Buh-NAR-dee’,” she advises), who runs a family wholesale nursery with her husband and whose children include the homecoming queen finalist and a son who earned a Ph.D. in toxicology. She previously opposed the dumping of sewage sludge in the area and fought the excavation of granite from Rosemary’s Mountain, the conical-shaped landmark where California 76 meets I-15.

Finally, there is Jeanne Ray, 60, who lives in a mobile home park at 76 and I-15. Never the college student, she’s a self-taught accountant who fears no numbers--except her golf score--and who strikes an FDR pose as she smokes cigarettes with holder.

They never knew each other until word spread through this valley, like some dreaded, all-consuming wildfire, that Gregory Canyon was being eyeballed as a depository for much of North County’s garbage.

Together, these six are the most organized and vocal opponents of the Gregory Canyon site, one of three being considered by the county Board of Supervisors next month to play host to a new garbage landfill.

“The thing they all share in common is their unity of opposition to a landfill,” said Rick Daniels--the group’s target as director of special projects for Waste Management of California. The company, in partnership with two North County businessmen, owns the 1,600-acre site where it proposes to privately own and operate the dump.

“They’re a tenacious bunch,” he said.

Armando Buelna, the aide on trash landfill matters for Supervisor John MacDonald--whose district includes North County and the three proposed landfill sites--gives the sextet a qualified pat on the back for their efforts.

“They’re very intelligent women, and they’re gradually learning the system,” he said. “But I don’t think they have a grasp of it yet. They don’t seem to understand how the entire (county government) system works, or the immensity of it.”

He agreed--with the women’s own boast--that “they bring up information on an almost daily basis that I may not have heard about myself, about the landfill site or Waste Management. And some of it is significant. But a lot of it is insignificant, and still they portray it all the same.

“They’re trying to raise issues that are basically insignificant and try to generate a hysteria in the community that really isn’t productive. But it works for them in terms of raising public consciousness over the landfill. That’s their tactic.”

He does credit them, however, for pointing out some background facts and issues that might have otherwise escaped his attention. One such example is the debate over whether an underground water supply is below or near the landfill site.

Waste Management insists--based on a recently completed study the company itself commissioned--that the landfill does not overlap any existing underground water supply, save rain runoff from the surrounding rocky hills.

But, through their homework, the women showed Buelna a 1972 U.S. Geological Survey map that showed the aquifer running beneath the front toe of the proposed landfill. Buelna conceded that he didn’t know of the earlier survey, but says he probably would have learned about it sooner or later.

The ground-water issue is significant to critics who say that, if the floor of the landfill cannot successfully contain garbage toxins, the aquifer--which is a water supply for local Indians and is being considered as a possible underground regional storage basin for the San Diego County Water Authority--might be tainted by chemicals and made useless.

Waste Management officials insist that “state-of-the-art technology,” including the use of a polyethylene liner, will keep toxins from percolating into the ground water. Even if anything penetrates the liner, the area’s solid granite bedrock will prevent further leaching, and the toxins can be diverted into a collector device and be safely retrieved, the company says.

But Metzger, whose job with the Trash Bags is to investigate the geology of the site, turns to an appendix of Waste Management’s own commissioned study, which shows, among other things, that the rock structure is fractured. Given that, she insists, toxins that would seep through a broken liner would eventually infiltrate the ground water.

Dan Gillette, Waste Management’s project engineer, concedes that the rock structure was technically “fractured” as far as the bore holes were sunk, but that there were other elements of the rock that suggest it is solid.

“You have to make a qualitative call on what you think Mother Nature is doing out there,” he said of the rock samples. “You look at various lines of evidence that point to that interpretation (of solid bedrock). If you look at all the data from all the angles, you come up with the picture that emerges.”

And so it goes, as the Trash Bags try to shoot holes in Waste Management’s conclusions like so much anti-aircraft flak at enemy planes. How effective they are will be measured by the Board of Supervisors--or a host of state and federal agencies that also must judge the landfill environmentally safe before it is permitted to be built.

Sometimes their tactics, and their choice of ammunition, seem almost insurgent, if not sensational.

Once, for instance, they anticipated that Waste Management was heading to the county to apply for a major use permit for the landfill. But the group also knew that San Diego Gas & Electric Co. owned several acres in the middle of the landfill site for utility power lines, and that the utility hadn’t yet agreed to give up that ownership. So the women called the county planning office to warn them.

Sure enough, the company came in for the permit. “But you don’t own all the property in this area yet,” the worker said, retelling the story for The Times. “You can’t apply for the permit yet.”

The company left, empty-handed.

“We would have discovered that fact later when we looked at all the parcels involved,” the worker--who asked not to be identified--said. “But the women saved me some time.”

And Harber recalls the time, for instance, that she took a piece of the landfill liner to a county Planning Commission meeting and put a match to it. It dissolved in flames as commissioners stood up for a better view. Then she heated a pin and inserted it through the liner like a hot knife in butter.

Harber’s point, she said, was to show how the liner was susceptible to tearing or breakage through either chemical heat or abrasives, and would be rendered useless as a protective device.

Daniels had little use for Harber’s demonstration.

“Big deal,” he said. “It was irrelevant, because the material will never be exposed to flames and you won’t get chemical heat because above the liner is a felt liner, and, above that is 2 feet of gravel, then another felt fabric and 3 feet of soil before you even get to the garbage.”

Waste Management has generated substantial momentum itself in lobbying for its site--even before the Board of Supervisors has said it will even consider private ownership and operation of a landfill. The company hired a Fallbrook public relations man to develop community relations and send out press releases to local newspapers on behalf of the company. It retained a San Diego public relations and advertising agency to, among other things, set up show-and-tell VIP and media tours of other landfills operated by the company. It hired the former director of the organization “I Love a Clean San Diego” to become the director of environmental affairs for the Gregory Canyon project. And it has commissioned its own studies--one on the ground water, another on the local agricultural impact--in trying to show that the landfill would not irreparably harm the environment.

All the while, the Trash Bags have spent maybe $10,000 to finance their own war by way of telephone calls, photocopying, faxes, gasoline and postage. It’s a significant amount to them, minuscule contrasted with Waste Management’s coffers.

“Companies the size of Waste Management try to buy credibility through slick brochures and funding studies and sponsoring programs on National Public Radio,” griped Rice. “Becoming environmentally concerned is very chic.”

She and the other ladies concede that they are frustrated by the apathy displayed toward the landfill by some residents along the valley.

“This is truly a grass-roots effort, and it’s become all-consuming for us,” said Jeanne Ray. “I’ve asked everyone in my subdivision to help, and not one other person has. They all say, ‘Oh, but you’re already doing such a fine job.’ ”

Trella Hill said she’s distressed by people, including friends, who shrug off the entire controversy. “They say things like, ‘Well, they’ve got to put the dump somewhere .’ It’s like they’re committed to ignorance. There are options.”

Harber even found some apathy among religious groups when she tried to enlist support for the Pala band of Mission Indians, who hold sacred a mountain above the landfill site and a particularly large boulder on the property. Harber asked other churches to write letters asking that the site remain undesecrated by garbage. Slowly but surely, letters came in. But the Catholic Church, she said, was slow to respond.

“So I wrote a letter to the Pope,” she said with a grin. “Several days later, I got a call from the Papal Nuncio (the Pope’s formal representative) in Washington, who promised the matter would be looked into.”

Whether in reaction to that letter to the Vatican or a delayed response to the initial letter she sent the local office, the San Diego Diocese within days wrote its own letter on behalf of the Indians’ concern that their sacred mountain not be jeopardized.

“The county and Waste Management,” said the woman who wrote the Pope, “are underestimating our ability to fight them.”