Proposed Contract for County Trash Recycling Plant Stirs Up Opponents : Refuse: Part of agreement with facility’s builder would make county responsible for unforeseen costs.

The terms under which an East Coast company will agree to build and operate a $233-million trash recycling and energy-producing facility in San Marcos, contained in an inch-thick volume of proposed agreements between the county and the builder, drew immediate criticism from project opponents.

Bill Worrell, deputy director of the county Public Works Department, called the new agreement “a standard of the industry contract,” similar to ones under which about 120 trash complexes around the country are operated.

The contract, released Tuesday, lists the costs and specifications for the plant, which would separate reclaimable trash and burn the rest to produce electricity to be sold to San Diego Gas & Electric Co. Under the terms, the county would be liable for unforeseeable costs beyond $1 million.

If several major obstacles, including legal challenges and state bond authorization, can be overcome, construction could start as early as August. Worrell estimated that the entire complex could be completed in three years.

Tom Erwin, a Carlsbad activist and a member of North County Concerned Citizens, said that the new agreement “transfers much of the risk and responsibility (for the trash-burning plant) onto the county and onto the taxpayers.”

Several North County cities have filed lawsuits in an attempt to halt construction of the trash-burning plant, opposing it both on environmental grounds and because of cost concerns, he said.

“To pay for this facility, the county has to drive up landfill fees all over the county,” Erwin said. “Everybody in San Diego County will have to pay for this questionable project.”

Worrell conceded that existing $18.75-per-ton dumping fees would have to increase to $35 a ton with construction of the $81-million recycling plant and rise to $45 a ton to finance the $152-million trash-to-energy facility. To the average household, that increase would amount to an estimated $2-a-month increase in trash pickup fees during the first year and increases in succeeding years, he said.

But, Worrell defended the cost increases as “reasonable when compared to the costs of transporting North County refuse to a distant landfill site,” one of the alternatives to the trash-burning plant. He estimated the costs of shipping North County trash to a desert landfill site at more than $50 a ton.

By the turn of the century, the San Marcos operation will seem like a bargain contrasted wit other methods of trash disposal, Worrell predicted.

Councilwoman Pia Harris, the lone opponent of the county’s trash plant plans on the San Marcos City Council, said, “I don’t feel that the county is being prudent in going ahead with this very expensive boondoggle, especially in these recessionary times and especially now that there are other alternatives out there at considerably less cost and posing less damage to the environment.”

Harris and some of the other opponents to the county project said they had not yet seen the proposed new agreement with Boston-based Thermo Electron, the company scheduled to build the San Marcos plant. The new agreement is expected to be released for comment by the Board of Supervisors on Feb. 26 and come up for board approval about a month later.

“But the point is that they, the supervisors, have always said that they were proceeding with this project because there were no other alternatives, and now there are several others out there that would do a better job and would handle the entire problem and not just a part of it,” Harris said.

Harris also said that she doubts that “any city in its right mind would hand over its trash stream to the county for a project like this.”

Worrell acknowledged that several North County cities--Oceanside, Escondido, Encinitas and Carlsbad--are opposed to the San Marcos project and are seeking ways to dispose of their city’s refuse independent of the county landfill system.

A call for cities to commit their waste flow to the county to guarantee fodder for the recycling and energy-generating facilities has not brought a single city into the county fold yet, Worrell conceded, “but we have not been pushing it.”

He said the county is not concerned by the cities that are seeking alternative trash sites because the San Marcos trash-to-energy plant requires only 625,000 tons of trash a year to operate at full capacity, which amounts to only 25% of the county’s annual trash flow. The new contract can be signed without waiting to obtain commitments from cities, he said, “because the likelihood is very high that we will have enough trash to operate the plant.”

Nancy Allen, chief aide to county Board of Supervisors Chairman John MacDonald, said the supervisor had not had time to study the new agreement, which arrived at county offices Tuesday, a day when the board was in session all day.

Allen said that MacDonald’s chief concern about the contract involved the liability issue, which leaves the county faced with unforeseeable costs in the future.

Worrell said the county would be liable for “acts of God” or other expenses, such as future air pollution control devices required by the state, “but that goes along with the question of who owns the plant, and we, as the owners and users, must assume that risk.”

Worrell said the county has the right to withdraw from the contract if construction does not begin by the year’s end.

Still standing in the path of the project are dozens of permits that must be obtained from all levels of government, he said. More importantly, litigation with three North County cities must be resolved, a valid energy sales agreement must be reached with San Diego Gas & Electric Co., and a state financing agency must approve a bond issue to finance the construction, he added.