San Marcos Demands Backing on Waste Plant : Government: Support the trash-to-energy plan or pay the price, officials tell other North County cities. Otherwise, the county could lose bid to expand its landfill.

San Marcos plans to use both a carrot and a stick to force other North County cities and county government into line and move ahead with construction of the much-delayed waste-to-energy plant.

If the county fails to approve the city’s plans to penalize plant opponents, Mayor Lee Thibadoux said, San Marcos will turn down the county’s permit to expand the county’s only North County landfill. The trash-to-energy plant is expected to bring millions in revenue to the city.

Thibadoux said that an ordinance approved by a 3-1 vote Tuesday by the San Marcos City Council “is not meant to penalize the cities which oppose the trash plant, but it is meant to wake up the ratepayers in those cities to what their councils are doing by imposing surcharges that will drastically increase their trash bills.”

The county-operated San Marcos landfill is nearing capacity, Thibadoux pointed out, and the county already has submitted a request to the city to amend the conditional use permit and expand the landfill.

Thibadoux said that if the county wants to expand its landfill, it must obtain permission from the city, “and we want the right to impose certain fees and impose surcharges” on those cities that do not sign a commitment to send their trash to the new plant.

Thermo-Electron, the private company that proposes to build and operate the trash-to-energy plant, already has committed $1 million to San Marcos for allowing the plant there. According to a draft environmental report, the city also can expect $75 million in revenue from the plant over the next 24 years.

However, the company says it must have commitments that it will receive a certain amount of trash in order for the plant to be financially viable. While other North County cities continue to send their trash to the landfill, they have refused to commit to doing so in the future.

Carlsbad, Encinitas and Escondido city councils have come out against the waste-to-energy plant, filing lawsuits to impede its construction because of concern over environmental dangers that trash-burning operations create.

County solid waste management officials have asked all North County cities to sign agreements committing their waste flow to the facility, but none of the cities has signed the agreement, according to Nancy Allen, administrative assistant to County Supervisor John MacDonald, whose district encompasses the North County area.

“The cities feel that it is premature to commit their trash when it may be a lucrative commodity down the line,” Allen said.

The San Marcos mayor said that the ordinance passed Tuesday night by the City Council would impose a $10 per ton “host” fee on all trash brought into the city to pay for the damage and inconvenience to the city and its residents for the noise, dust, traffic and other adverse effects of the county landfill and the future trash-to-energy plant.

In addition to the $10 per ton host fee, San Marcos plans to impose a surcharge of escalating amounts on cities that do not sign the county agreement to commit their trash flow to the landfill and the new plant.

For holdout cities, a 45-day delay could boost the present tipping (dumping) fee of $18 per ton to $35 a ton. For those cities that refuse to commit their trash flow to the San Marcos disposal sites, surcharges and fees would increase the per-ton cost to as high as $196.89.

“If the cities who are opposing our plans (to build a trash-burning facility) want to throw their money around on lawsuits and such, we might as well get some of it,” Thibadoux said of the proposed surcharges. He estimated that the surcharges would be distributed to San Marcos, the county and to other cities which sign the trash commitment to compensate them for “loss of a valuable commodity”--space in the landfill being used by uncommitted cities.

Once constituents in the cities that refuse to go along with the San Marcos agreement find out how much their trash bills are going to increase to pay the surcharges, “I think they will put pressure on their councils to see the light and join in.”

San Marcos Councilwoman Pia Harris, a fervent opponent of the trash-to-energy plant and landfill expansion, said she doubts that the council’s action imposing fees and surcharges is legal.

“I want to see that dump closed and I do not think that the trash-to-energy plant will be built,” she said. “I think its time has come and passed. As for the surcharges, anyone can play that game. What if Carlsbad decided to charge us every time we flushed?”

Carlsbad is the site of the Encina Water Pollution Facility, which handles sewage from a number of North County cities, including San Marcos.

County supervisors, faced with a stack of environmental data and several incensed property owners, this week delayed until Nov. 13 a decision on whether to expand the San Marcos landfill. The expansion plans call for extending the dump both upward and outward to gain dumping capacity into the 21st Century.

The trash dump, which was opened in 1979 and initially was expected to last until 1999, has been filling faster than expected and will be at capacity by next summer unless supervisors approve the $25.5-million expansion, which would increase the height of the present landfill to 950 feet and add more than 260 acres of new landfill and buffer area to the site.

Evelyn Alemanni, an Elfin Forest resident who is fighting the proposed landfill expansion, said that a group of 25 families in the area plan to protest the expansion plan and are seeking to hold county supervisors to their promise that the dump would be closed and a park built on the property after 1991.

Supervisor Brian Bilbray said Tuesday that a decision not to expand the North County landfill would lead to even greater environmental problems than the San Marcos expansion would bring because trash trucks would have to travel to the Sycamore Canyon landfill, a daily round trip of about 60 miles for 1,600 vehicles.

“We have to look at the environmental impact of emissions from 1,600 diesel trucks and the impact on the Sycamore landfill when we consider what would happen if we did not approve this expansion,” Bilbray said.

Bill Worrell, deputy director of public works, said that the recommended “up-and-out” expansion at the San Marcos landfill would extend the site’s capacity by six to 11 years, only two years beyond 1999, the initial estimate for closure of the San Marcos site.