S.D. Supervisors Reject New Trash-to-Energy Pact

In a last-minute turnaround that may kill the decade-old plan for a trash-to-energy plant in San Marcos, the County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday rejected a renegotiated contract with the Massachusetts company proposing to build the $325-million project.

The board lined up, 3 to 2, against the project when Supervisor Leon Williams, an eight-year supporter of the plan, reversed his position for the crucial vote, saying the cost and financial risk borne by county residents would be too heavy under the terms of the new pact. Supervisors John MacDonald and Susan Golding agreed.

The president of Thermo Electron Energy Systems said he will return with a new proposal. But jubilant opponents said the incinerator’s chances are going up in smoke as a deadline approaches for revocation of $185 million in state bonds.

“I think this incinerator is dead,” said Tom Erwin, a Carlsbad planning commissioner and activist who has spent four years fighting it. “I don’t think they have a chance of bringing this incinerator back to life.”

“My opinion is that, effectively, it’s dead,” said MacDonald, who represents the North County supervisorial district where the plant would have been situated.

The incinerator’s demise would increase the urgency of the supervisors’ search for a long-term answer to the question of where to dump trash from booming North County.

County planners have tentatively identified possible landfill sites in Fallbrook and Pala, but it would be years before trucks could start hauling trash to any new site.

The project could become the second San Diego County waste-to-energy proposal to die in recent years. In 1987, the developer of the proposed Sander trash-burning plant in Mira Mesa backed out in the face of mounting opposition on environmental grounds.

Meanwhile, supervisors grappled Tuesday with a more immediate trash problem, directing staff members to prepare a contingency plan in the event that the county’s San Marcos landfill reaches capacity and closes before necessary permits for a planned expansion are obtained.

The landfill may close by December or January, deputy chief administrative officer Lari Sheehan says. With the county facing a lawsuit from an adjacent property owner who wants to block the expansion, supervisors want to investigate other destinations for North County trash.

The board asked for a study of whether it can reopen a closed landfill off Gopher Canyon Road in Bonsall, and is also awaiting an opinion from County Counsel Lloyd M. Harmon Jr. on whether it is legal to truck North County trash to landfills in Santee and Otay Mesa.

A Superior Court judge ruled July 24 that the county’s environmental impact report on the planned expansion does not adequately address questions about its impact on water quality, a decision that will mean delays in enlarging the San Marcos landfill. The supervisors Tuesday authorized the expenditure of $225,000 to conduct more studies on ground water.

As a result of Tuesday’s vote on the trash-to-energy plant, however, the county now may face revocation of a permit from the city of San Marcos allowing the expansion. Mayor Lee Thibadeau said the city will “re-evaluate” the decision in light of the apparent rejection of the trash incinerator.

“One reason I supported expanding the landfill is because the county had another solution and they needed the time,” Thibadeau said. “Now they’ve taken the solution off the table.”

As proposed by Thermo Electron, the waste-to-energy facility eventually would be capable of handling 624,000 tons of trash annually--about half of North County’s annual flow. The firm planned to build a sophisticated system to remove recyclable material from trash brought to the county landfill--the first phase of the construction project--then shred and burn most of the rest in an incinerator with a 30-story smokestack.

The entire process would divert about two-thirds of North County’s trash from landfills, while the incinerator would power a generator capable of producing electricity for 46,000 homes.

In sometimes emotional testimony Tuesday and a week ago, opponents said the plant would release toxins and pollute the air. But, in comments before their vote Tuesday, the supervisors rejected environmental considerations as a reason to block the project, saying they were sold on the safety of combustion as one method of disposing of trash.

“I have never had a problem with the environmental issues, and that has become more of an emotional issue,” MacDonald said.

Rather, it was the financial structure of the proposed contract that a majority of the supervisors could not support. Though the county has a 6-year-old contract with Thermo Electron to build a plant, the company has said that it cannot operate the incinerator under those terms.

Instead, it negotiated a new pact with county staff members that increased the liability for county taxpayers, without sufficiently clearing up other financial questions.

Golding, for example, cited a pending San Diego Gas & Electric Co. lawsuit, under which the company is seeking to cancel a 1983 agreement with Thermo Electron obligating it to purchase electricity at higher than current rates. That contract would provide $45 million in funding for the incinerator.

“I don’t know how we can agree that this project is financially viable when a giant piece of the financial puzzle isn’t even known to us,” Golding said.

Under the revised contract fees, the price for trash delivered to the plant would have more than doubled over that promised in the 1985 contract, and taxpayers would have assumed the risk of financing modifications to the plant if laws governing air pollution standards changed.

The county also would have been responsible for supplying fuel for the plant if trash deliveries fell short of the required amount, a provision that could have worked against the plant if a trash boycott proposed by North County cities materialized.

“I believe the flaws in this contract are too great for me to put . . . my integrity on the line,” Williams said.

Proponents of the plan, including Supervisors Brian Bilbray and George Bailey, who voted for the contract, cited a consultant’s report that the deal matched industry standards and that the financial terms eventually would seem quite reasonable as prices to bring trash to landfills escalated.

“You’re not going to get a better agreement anywhere in the U.S. than we’re getting here,” a clearly agitated Bilbray said as it became clear that the agreement would fail. “You’re not going to get a better deal. This is the best.”

After the vote, supervisors asked Thermo Electron to return with a new proposal to build the recycling part of the plant. But the company’s president, Jerry Davis, said later that he still plans to attempt to win approval for the incinerator. However, he said he will separate the parts of the plant into two packages.

It was unclear Tuesday how Davis could amend the contract to make it more palatable to any of the three opponents. He and the county face a Dec. 31 deadline, under which a state financing agency will revoke $185 million in bonds for the project unless escrow is completed.

“I don’t know where we are with it,” said Granville Bowman, director of the county’s public works department, who noted that staff members had received no direction to amend the agreement again. “We’ll have to go back and look at it.”