County Gets Serious About Recycling

The San Diego County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously Tuesday to impose mandatory recycling on the entire county except for the city of San Diego, but leaders of several cities said now is not the time to impose a mandatory program.

As outlined by the county, the recycling program will be phased in gradually over the next year and a half, beginning with North County homeowners Aug. 1 and extended to all county trash sources in all areas by July 1, 1994.

Adding muscle to the plan, the county intends to levy increasingly more expensive fees on garbage trucks that bring recycleable trash to county dumps, costs that will be passed on to homeowners, renters, businesses and industry. In short, that means just about everyone who generates trash.

The road to mandatory recycling began more than three years ago, when county officials adopted an integrated waste management program calling for voluntary recycling. The goal was to reduce trash flow to county landfills by 30% as of last Jan. 1 or place mandatory recycling requirements on all users of county landfills.

But the reduction didn’t happen.

Supervisor Susan Golding scolded opponents who rose to protest the mandatory program, pointing out that “this is nothing new. We made it clear for three years that, if we did not achieve a 30% reduction, we would go to a mandatory plan. We have achieved only a 17% reduction.”

The only city safe from the county’s edict is San Diego, which operates its own trash disposal sites.

Beginning Aug. 1, North County homes will be required to separate their trash to segregate glass, aluminum, plastic beverage bottles and newspapers, tin cans and “white goods” or household appliances from their other garbage for curbside pickup.

The same requirements take effect in South County next March 1 and in East County on Sept. 1, 1992.

Multifamily buildings such as apartments and condominiums will be added to the mandatory recycling system in North County on July 1, 1992, in South County on July 1, 1993, and in East County on July 1, 1994.

Residential yard waste--clippings and branches--will go under the mandatory recycling plan on Jan. 1, 1992, in North County, a year later in South County and Jan. 1, 1994, in East County.

Industrial wastes consisting of 90% rock, sand, concrete, dirt and asphalt will be barred from landfills in North County by Oct. 1 this year, in South County by Oct. 1, 1992, and in East County by Oct. 1, 1993. Other disposal sites and methods can be found for this debris, county public works officials said.

Mandatory recycling will begin for commercial businesses on July 1, 1992, in North County, a year later in South County and July 1, 1994, in East County. Commercial offices will be required to separate office papers, corrugated cardboard, newspaper and aluminum.

“Hospitality industry” establishments, such as restaurants and bars, also will be required to recycle corrugated cardboard, glass jars and bottles, aluminum, plastic beverage bottles, white goods (appliances) and tin cans.

Bill Worrell, a deputy director of the county Public Works Department, said that all cities in the county already have some form of residential recycling program in operation, so the transition to a mandatory program will be easier than in the commercial, industrial and multifamily fields.

Officials from the county’s cities will decide how they will implement the plan within their city limits, and commercial trash haulers will be bound by individual municipal rules, he said.

Enforcement of the program will be imposed by a series of increasing “surcharges” on haulers who bring in nonconforming trash loads, county officials explained. For the first three months of a program, only warnings will be issued. Then $25-per-truck penalties will be levied. After the six months, the fine will be increased to $50-per-load, and, at nine months, the penalty will rise to $100.

Supervisor Brian Bilbray tried to focus the mandatory plan on North County by proposing that it be imposed only when local landfills were within two years of capacity. North County’s lone landfill in San Marcos is scheduled to reach capacity within six to nine months, while South County’s landfill has an estimated life span of more than 10 years, and East County’s landfill is not expected to be filled for 35 years or more.

“I can’t believe what I am hearing from you Mr. Bilbray,” an angry Board Chairman John MacDonald said. He called Bilbray’s proposed delay on countywide mandatory recycling “absolutely irresponsible.”

“It’s a good political decision for someone who is thinking of running for office at some time in the future,” MacDonald said of Bilbray’s proposal to limit the recycling requirements to North County. “But I can’t see us moving backwards in recycling in this county. Otherwise we will have another crisis in the future.”

Golding said the county board must “have the political courage to do what I think everyone has been asking us to do for a long time. If we put off for 24 months what was scheduled to be a three-year time line, then we basically wimped out.

“We’re not saying we won’t take trash,” Golding said, “we are saying that it must be separated out for recyclables. That’s not a very revolutionary theory.”

During public testimony, Escondido Mayor Jerry Harmon spoke for eight North County cities in supporting expansion of the county’s San Marcos landfill and the present program of voluntary recycling now in effect in all North County cities.

“To implement restrictive mandatory recycling at this time is unrealistic,” Harmon said, pointing out that markets for the recycled materials are not yet developed, and most of the recycled materials would end up in landfills for lack of manufacturing uses for the discards.

La Mesa Mayor Art Madrid agreed that the time for mandatory recycling has not arrived.

“We are being penalized for the county’s failure to resolve the trash crisis,” Madrid said.

Most of the cities in San Diego County have been working on a program to bring recycling up to a 25% level by 1995, a state deadline imposed by legislation in 1988. The county’s mandate undermines the cities cooperative effort, a number of city officials said.