North County Cities Join in Effort to Block Trash Plant Proposal : Waste: Escondido mayor leads fight to stop contruction of San Marcos trash-to-energy facility by withholding municipal trash.

Eight North County cities hope to form a countywide coalition in an attempt to block construction of a $325-million trash-to-energy incineration plant in San Marcos.

Escondido Mayor Jerry Harmon proposed at a press conference Friday that all of the county’s 18 cities boycott the plant by pledging to withhold their municipal trash flow.

Without a guaranteed source of trash to burn, the incinerator could not be built, Harmon said, because the county is committed in its contract with a private firm to provide more than 600,000 tons of waste yearly as fodder for the electricity generators. Power generated by the trash-burning plant would be sold to offset costs of the facility.

Eight North County cities already have refused to commit their city’s trash to the plant, although they also have not committed themselves to a boycott. If those cities withhold their trash, Harmon said, county officials will have to look elsewhere for a guaranteed source of refuse for the incinerator.

The eight cities are Carlsbad, Del Mar, Encinitas, Escondido, Oceanside, Poway, Solana Beach and Vista.

“We all have a stake in this,” Harmon said. “It will impact trash collection prices all over the county.”

The county operates all the trash-disposal sites in the area, except for the city of San Diego and a few small private dumps, and must charge the same fees at all its facilities.

County supervisors are scheduled to sign a long-term contract with a Massachusetts firm, Thermo Electron Inc., to build and operate the trash-to-energy plant on a 16-acre county-owned tract in San Marcos.

Harmon said that he will ask the county board to delay signing the agreement for several months but said, “I’m not very optimistic that they will listen.”

He said the delay would allow time to complete a study of alternative disposal methods commissioned by a coalition of North County cities opposed to the plant. He said the study is expected to be ready in 60 to 90 days but may be completed sooner.

Mayors from 12 cities were invited to participate in the news conference Friday and representatives from eight showed up. In addition to North County support, officials of Chula Vista, Santee and El Cajon also generally agreed with Harmon’s proposal to form a countywide coalition to find a less-costly solution to the growing trash-disposal problem.

“We should give due consideration to all of the alternatives before making a decision,” Mayor Tim Nader of Chula Vista said. “The whole region is going to be affected by air pollution and increased trash prices. The issues must be explored objectively.”

Carlsbad Mayor Claude Lewis said his city, which abuts the county’s landfill site and the proposed trash-to-energy plant site, is not worried about pollution from the facility “because we believe that the state of technology has advanced enough to solve any such problem.”

But the Carlsbad official stood firm with Harmon in backing a countywide coalition of cities to reach a less-costly countywide solution.

Harmon said he and other North County city officials will lobby throughout the county to form a solid bloc opposed “to the county’s unilateral decision-making on this issue which affects us all.” The group will confront supervisors with its plans at Tuesday’s board meeting.

San Marcos Councilman Mike Preston, who backs the county’s plans to build the trash-burning plant in his city, rebutted Harmon’s proposals as “too little and too late.”

“We’ve had studies galore, and they all say the same thing. There is nothing different in their ideas than what we have had. They just came to the party too late,” Preston said of the Harmon group.

The city of San Marcos will receive revenues from the plant and a recovery-recycling center that will be built within the boundaries. The city also plans to charge a $5-a-ton fee to trash haulers using the facility and an adjacent landfill.

Cost comparisons released Friday from a study commissioned by the cities of Encinitas, Carlsbad, Oceanside and Escondido indicate that the costs of the trash-to-energy plant and its related resource recovery center are higher than existing landfill operations and recycling centers.

County landfill-dumping costs are now $23.50 a ton. The costs at the trash-burning plant and adjacent resource-recovery facility would be five times as high, $125 per ton.