Players in North County Trash Battle Make New Moves : Garbage: Supervisors consider reopening old dumps or speeding up creation of a recycling plant. San Marcos’ mayor, meanwhile, calls for closure of his city’s landfill.

While county supervisors debated alternate sites for North County’s garbage, including reopening closed North County dumps and fast-tracking construction of a recycling facility, San Marcos Mayor Lee Thibadeau on Tuesday began action to close the area’s only remaining landfill.

Thibadeau said Tuesday that he will ask his city’s staff to see if the county dump, which lies within the San Marcos city limits, has already reached its legal capacity and, if a permit issued by the city to expand the landfill capacity is invalid because of new environmental constraints and can be canceled.

County supervisors were told by their staff Tuesday that it would take at least three years to obtain necessary permits to reopen the county landfill in Bonsall, and that the facility contains only enough space to serve North County for one week.

The 16-acre site of a proposed San Marcos trash-to-energy plant, which was essentially scuttled when supervisors canceled the contract for the privately built incinerator, would require 2 1/2 years for permits and would offer only a few days of capacity, according to Norman Hickey, chief county administrative officer.

The board of supervisors did vote to allocate funds to negotiate with Thermo Electron Inc., a Boston-based conglomerate, to build a recycling facility--which was to have been a companion to the trash-burning plant--despite protests from opponents who said the recycling operation was only a “fuel source” for the incinerator.

Thibadeau has claimed for several months that the county has already exceeded its legal capacity at the landfill and should close it until proper permits are obtained for its expansion. County solid waste management staff, however, say the landfill will not reach capacity until January.

The San Marcos mayor said he is seeking help from Supervisor Susan Golding and from San Diego Councilwoman Judy McCarty to obtain space in the city of San Diego’s landfill at Miramar Naval Air Station so that some of North County’s waste can be diverted there.

He said he could not reach either official Tuesday but would continue his efforts.

“The Miramar landfill is only 18 miles from the San Marcos landfill,” Thibadeau said, “and it makes sense to use the nearest site.” The county landfills in Sycamore Canyon and Otay are farther from the major North County communities which generate most of the area’s trash, he said.

According to county Board Chairman John MacDonald, expansion of the San Marcos landfill cannot be started for nearly a year because of the time required to do studies and obtain permits from government agencies.

MacDonald told a group of Elfin Forest residents who live near the San Marcos landfill that the county will probably have to divert some of North County’s trash to the Sycamore site, which lies southeast of Poway, about a 60-mile round trip from North County coastal cities.

At Tuesday’s county board session, MacDonald served notice that he plans to keep close tabs on negotiations with Thermo Electron over the recycling facility so that the county will not be shouldering the financial responsibility if the plant proves infeasible.

“I don’t want us to be put in the position of having to push forward on something that we don’t want to,” MacDonald said.

Thibadeau, who was angry when MacDonald voted with the majority of supervisors to reject a revised contract for the trash-to-energy plant, which would have brought San Marcos millions in revenues, said a recent court ruling that the environmental studies on the San Marcos landfill expansion were insufficient gave his city an opportunity to cancel its permit for the expansion and force the county to find other means to dispose of the area’s garbage.