Closing of Only Landfill Threatens North County

North County could be left without a local trash dump because the Regional Water Quality Control Board is prohibited from borrowing money from the county to pay for ground-water studies on expanding the San Marcos landfill.

Bill Worrell, deputy director of the county Public Works Department, said Monday that the San Marcos landfill has only about six to 10 months of capacity before it must close. He asked the regional regulatory board to let the county hire an independent expert to investigate rumored ground-water contamination from the dump.

County officials are seeking a permit from the regional agency to add 200 feet of trash atop the existing landfill, an expansion that could extend the use of the landfill by five years.

In January, the water board voted 5 to 2 to deny the county a permit to expand the San Marcos dump, but several board members indicated they would change their votes if sufficient geologic evidence was presented to show that the landfill is not polluting surface water or ground-water sources.

The water board’s executive director, Art Coe, warned that the board had no funds to continue its evaluation of the San Marcos dump site and no authority to accept funds from the county to do the work.

Closure of the San Marcos landfill would force trash haulers to transport North County trash to Otay Mesa or Sycamore Canyon landfills in the southern and eastern sectors of the county.

The county Board of Supervisors has voted to prohibit such a move because of the impact on air quality and on the capacities of the other county landfills.

Other North County landfill sites have been proposed by both private and governmental agencies, but Worrell estimates that it would be at least four years before another landfill could be opened by the county.

Further, private companies seeking to lease land for transfer stations and landfill sites have yet to reach agreements with landowners or gain permits from governmental regulatory agencies.

Worrell acknowledged that more time is needed and said the county is willing to finance the cost of additional analysis by the regional water quality agency to move the expansion forward.

Residents of nearby Elfin Forest and Questhaven, however, urged the Water Quality Control Board to block the county’s plan to add a 200-foot-high “vertical expansion” to the existing San Marcos landfill.

Instead, they proposed that the county use an adjacent 16-acre site, reserved for construction of a trash-burning plant, as landfill space. The site would extend the life of the San Marcos dump by at least two years, according to Patricia Newton, spokeswoman for the area residents.

Escondido Mayor Jerry Harmon presented a letter signed by elected officials of eight North County cities urging the water agency to move forward with its studies to expand the dump.

The cities--Escondido, Vista, Oceanside, Carlsbad, Encinitas, Solana Beach, Poway and Del Mar--seek an interim solution to the North County trash crisis until a long-term agreement can be reached to open new landfills or to transport North County’s trash outside the area to a regional landfill in the desert or in Riverside County.