Down in the Dumps : Trash: County’s decision to expand landfill spoils the high hopes of Elfin Forest residents.

A wise guy once said: Beware of what you wish or you might get it.

A dozen or so Elfin Forest families who are neighbors to the San Marcos landfill--the only large North County trash dump--have been waiting and wishing for the facility to reach capacity. Their wish is expected to occur by next July, but its fulfillment has turned against them.

Instead of closing the dump by July, 1991, county public works staffers are now racing the calendar, working overtime to expand the landfill so that it will accommodate North County’s discards for the next 10 or 11 years. And in the process, the county is offering and in some cases demanding to buy the homes of neighbors who have waited for the end of clattering trash trucks and pungent garbage smells.

“It’s not fair,” said Evelyn Alemanni, one of the landfill’s beleaguered neighbors. “They promised us that when the dump was full, they would turn it into an open space park.

“We’ve been waiting and waiting for that day to come, hanging on to that promise. Now, instead, they are going to build a trash pile 20 stories high right next to us and expand the landfill right into our community, right across Elfin Forest Road.”

She laughs when she calls the county’s “vertical expansion” of the present landfill “Mount Trashmore” and its 230-acre “horizontal expansion,” “Rancho Basura” (Spanish for garbage), but the laugh is hollow and no smile goes with it.

Alemanni’s home is within the proposed expansion area--part of a proposed buffer zone to separate the Elfin Forest from the active landfill. The County Board of Supervisors, which in 1979 promised residents that they would turn the landfill into a park when it was filled, now is offering to buy Joe and Evelyn Alemanni’s home and land at fair market value.

For Robert Haberman, who came from Illinois and bought a home in the secluded valley 4 1/2 years ago, the future is bleak--a broken marriage which he blames in part on the struggle over the nearby landfill, a brush with bankruptcy and the prospect of beginning again with little to show for his efforts.

Haberman and owners of two new estate homes do not have the choice that the Alemannis and a dozen other homeowners have. He must sell his California dream home for the price an independent appraiser names or face condemnation and a court fight.

“If they don’t get me out of this in a stylish fashion, I’ll fight,” Haberman said of the county’s as yet undisclosed offer for his house. “Like the guy in that movie, I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it any more.”

But, he admits, whatever the price, he’ll miss the silent nights after the bulldozers have shut down. He’ll miss the 200 or so Western quail that dine on his hillside.

“I love the location, I love this house, I love feeding the birds. I thought we could hang in here forever until this

came along. So much for the economic dreams one has of living in Southern California.”

For Jim and Marcie Malloy, the thought of leaving their 3-acre plant nursery is unthinkable, but the thought of staying is just as bad.

“We’ve spent five years, six days a week, building up our business. I don’t think we’ve been away from here together for more than three days since we started,” Jim Malloy said, adding, “This is not just our home, it’s our livelihood.”

The Malloys don’t have to sell their house, although the county will offer to buy it. But Marcie Malloy is concerned about the mound of trash which will rise 200 feet higher over their acreage in coming years and it’s not just an aesthetic concern.

For those within the buffer zone, the 950-foot-high landfill level approved two weeks ago by county supervisors will cut afternoon and evening light from the west, not to mention cutting out sunsets.

“We’ve already had problems with freezing in the low-lying areas,” Marcie Malloy said. “Losing sunlight, even 15 minutes of it a day, could be a disaster.”

Bruce Hamilton is angry at everyone and determined to seek retribution for the smashing of his dreams. But how? And against whom?

Hamilton, an engineer, and his wife, Linda, raise and train Arabian horses on their Elfin Forest land. They and others had awaited the coming day when the landfill was to be converted into open space with bridle trails for their enjoyment.

“We previously had our home on the market, but we took it off,” Bruce Hamilton said. “If we put it up for sale now, we would have to disclose everything that’s happened and what is going to happen”--10 or more years of noise, dust, odors and eyesores from the neighboring landfill.

Although Hamilton and most of his neighbors have been told that they have the choice of accepting or rejecting the county’s offer to buy them out at fair market value, he is not appeased.

“Whether they condemn us or not, they have already condemned us by their actions (enlarging and extending the life of the landfill).”

Michael and Candy Lindemuth applied for and received a building permit for their spacious custom-built home last January from the city of San Marcos. They didn’t pull the permit and begin construction until May. A month later, and long before they moved into their Mediterranean-style villa, the county earmarked their land for acquisition.

The county-appointed appraiser has come and gone but the Lindemuths still don’t know what they will be offered for their dream home. The appraiser “swore an oath of secrecy” not to reveal his figures to the anxious homeowners, Michael Lindemuth said.

Whatever the amount that the Lindemuths are offered, it won’t be enough--though they have no choice in the matter.

“How much is a year and a half of your life worth?” he asked.

“We had a place in Olivenhain and we were looking for another where we could have more room for horses. We found this and it was just what we were looking for, a lot level enough so it would not take a lot of grading,” he explained.

Although the county knew about the plans to acquire the Lindemuths’ property, the couple did not find out about it until their home was almost finished and they were set to move in.

“We halted work for a while when we found out. Figured that it was silly to throw away any more money when we knew they were going to take it. But we decided to go ahead, anyway.”

Now the Lindemuths have lived in their new home for a little over a month and “it’s perfect. I think we will build another house just like it when we find another place,” he said.

The Lindemuths, the Habermans and a third family, the Butler-Montgomerys, have no choice in the matter. They must sell or be condemned. But the others--the Alemannis, the Hamiltons, the Malloys and eight or so other residents--must decide whether to go or stay.

Jim Magee, a county engineer, said that the open-ended offer to buy out all but the three homeowners closest to the landfill was a humane gesture proposed by the county Board of Supervisors.

“We don’t want a few people ‘paying’ for what is a public facility, paying by being adversely impacted,” Magee explained. “The public should pay for acquiring their properties at fair market value and that is what we are planning to do, if they want to sell.”

And what will happen to the homes that the county acquires? Magee isn’t sure yet, but he figures that when the expanded landfill is full--in about 10 years from now--the county will probably put most of the property up for sale. “None of the land is to be used for actual landfill operations,” Magee said of the Elfin Forest properties. “When the landfill is closed, it will be turned into some sort of a park by the city of San Marcos.”

To a man, the property owners who have a choice are undecided as to what they are going to do. But they do plan to go on fighting to overturn the county’s decision to expand the San Marcos landfill.

Marcie Malloy can’t decide if she can stand another 10 years of dust seeping under her closed windows, of the constant roar of trash trucks and the growl of bulldozers seven days a week, of the shuddering roar of blasting and the cloying smell of overripe garbage.

“We’re not the only ones affected,” she said. “It’s the whole valley and more. The heavy trucks on our roads, the trash that they scatter along the roadside, the mud they track out of the dump that makes the road dangerous for all of us, the accidents that happen almost every week and the views of the Pacific Ocean that will be lost as the pile of trash grows higher.

“They brand us as NIMBYs, Not In My Back Yard people. But I think we have done our share.

“I think that they should honor the promise that they made to us 10 years ago and close the dump, and find someplace else to put the dump, which is not in someone else’s back yard.”