Public Sounds Off Over Proposed Sites for a North County Landfill

Pummeled by passion and technical arguments, slides, transparencies, videos, handouts, attorneys, engineers, geologists, housewives, a Marine, an Indian and fellow government officials, a sometimes defensive and combative Board of Supervisors listened all day Wednesday to a few reasons why three landfills sites should be developed in North County--and a whole lot of reasons why they shouldn’t.

The hearing, which was continued until next Wednesday because of a lineup of 30 organizations and more than 100 individuals who wanted to speak, marked the beginning of the end of the local decision-making process on where to put new landfills in North County.

But no matter what the Board of Supervisors decides, final approval rests with a host of state and federal government agencies who ultimately must anoint the place where much of North County’s trash will be dumped.

The three locations now under consideration are the Aspen Road site in Fallbrook, the Gregory Canyon site alongside the San Luis Rey River and California 76 in Pala, and the Blue Canyon site near Warner Springs.

Most of North County’s trash is now trucked to the county landfill at San Marcos, which is expected to be filled by next summer. On Tuesday, the Board of Supervisors voted to enlarge it, extending its life to the year 2006.

Board members offered few hints on what sites, if any, they were favoring at the end of Wednesday’s meeting. Supervisor Brian Bilbray said he could dismiss the Blue Canyon site--which is owned by the federal Bureau of Land Management, which has no intention of giving it up anyway. Others have complained that it is too far away and too fragile a habitat to be dedicated to garbage.

Throughout the day, a steady parade of speakers, many of them professionals, lambasted the environmental impact report on the three proposed sites, saying it was so fraught with errors and faulty conclusions--especially in terms of potential earthquake faults and ground-water contamination concerns--as to be worthless.

After one speaker made reference to the quantity and quality of advice being given to the board that challenged the adequacy of the EIR, supervisors Chairman Leon Williams answered, pointing a finger to his temple, “We have to use our brains, too.”

When Marine Lt. Col. Paul Smith admonished the board not to put a landfill at Aspen Road because of concern that it could eventually contaminate the Santa Margarita River ground water that provides most of Camp Pendleton’s water, Supervisor John MacDonald had his retort ready.

“Don’t you have some toxic waste problems on base?” he asked.

Early in the meeting, when many in the audience of nearly 500 persons applauded a speaker criticizing the proposed landfill sites, Williams hammered his gavel and announced curtly: “This was only the second time in two years of my chairmanship that I had to pound the gavel. I’m surprised that people from North County would come and cause those kinds of problems.”

Among the quieter ones in the audience were about 60 residents of the Champagne Village mobile home park alongside Lawrence Welk Resort, who are concerned that the current sites may be rejected and a new one, near their neighborhood, might be chosen for a landfill instead.

The group was bused to the meeting by Waste Management of California, the company that is part-owner of the Gregory Canyon site and wants to operate a landfill there privately, for profit. The seniors were also hosted to box lunches by Waste Management during the lunch break but--just as Waste Management officials got their chance to address the board--the contingent got up and left the meeting hall for their bus rides home.

Among the other speakers were Robert Brucato, assistant director of the Palomar Observatory, who complained that dust from the landfills would increase light pollution, thereby diminishing the observatory’s work.

Critics of the Aspen Road site argued that it was the only one under consideration that would have to accommodate garbage by piling it up, mountain-fashion, versus filling a canyon, while critics of the Gregory Canyon site complained of evidence, ignored in the EIR, of the presence of earthquake faults in the area.

George Forman, an attorney for the Pala band of Mission Indians, said the county failed to adequately study alternative landfill sites and predicted that none of the three sites now being considered will pass muster by the other agencies.

At that point, he said, “You will be back behind square one, and even further behind in trying to fill the county’s need for a landfill.”