Extension Granted on Trash-Plant Funds

Despite the best efforts of neighboring public officials, backers of the San Marcos trash-to-energy plant Tuesday won another one-year extension on $185 million in public bond money to help build the first phase of the project.

By a 2-1 vote, the California Pollution Control Financing Authority decided to hold the bond proceeds in a special escrow account until Dec. 31, 1991, a move that now gives businessmen hoping to build the plant 12 more months to acquire construction permits and environmental approvals. The offer of state funds was due to expire this month.

“Hopefully, we can move forward much quicker now,” said San Marcos Mayor Lee Thibadeau, who appeared before the pollution authority to tout the facility and plead for the extension.

But opponents of the project--including the mayors of Carlsbad, Encinitas and Escondido--came away from Tuesday’s meeting with a small victory of their own after authority members promised not to release a penny of the bond money until holding another full-blown public hearing on the proposal.

By that time, the voting majority on the three-member authority will shift from the Republicans to the Democrats. Sitting on the panel are designees from the State Treasurer, the state finance department director and the state controller.

Dwight Worden, special legal counsel for the city of Encinitas, said after Tuesday’s vote that the recent election of Kathleen Brown as state treasurer could help kill the trash project. Worden noted that Brown, who has taken no stand on the San Marcos project, is regarded as sympathetic to environmental concerns.

“Kathleen Brown comes into office in the next few weeks, and we feel we have a shot at a 2-1 vote” against state financing of the project, Worden said.

Worden and other opponents said the loss of the state funding would essentially gut the project, since the joint venture hoping to build the facility has yet to find an investor willing to pay the remaining $65 million in construction costs.

Backers, however, argued that, although loss of the public money would be a “big hit,” they could ultimately make up the difference by increasing the so-called tipping fee charged to county government for unloading its garbage at the North County plant.

As part of the program, the authority sold and set aside $185 million in state bonds for the San Marcos project in December 1985. The money was considered the state’s contribution toward easing the strain on San Diego County’s dwindling landfills.

Yet the money has gone unclaimed, and the financing authority has already extended the escrow deadline three times for North County Resources Recovery Associates, or NCRRA, the joint venture hoping to build the plant.

A staff report blamed a spate of lawsuits against the proposed project and changing environmental regulations for the delay.

The report pronounced the project economically sound and warned that failure to extend the escrow deadline would cancel the $185-million issue and force trash-plant proponents to compete with other bond requests.

Worden and a number of North County public officials, however, attacked the project. Mayors Pamela C. Slater of Encinitas, Jerry Harmon of Escondido and Ann Kulchin of Carlsbad took turns criticizing the proposed trash plant as economically untenable and environmentally questionable. They warned that its smokestack would emit cancer-causing dioxins and vowed to starve the project by refusing to send their municipal garbage to San Marcos.

After more than two hours of back-and-forth argument, authority members voted 2 to 1 to extend the escrow deadline. Voting in favor were representatives for Finance Director Jess Huff and outgoing Treasurer Tom Hayes, both Republicans.

The lone dissenting vote came from the designee for Democratic Controller Gray Davis, a Democrat, who took a stand against the San Marcos plant during his recent reelection campaign.