Indians Pitch Landfill to North County Cities : Garbage: The Campo band, which plans to build a dump on its property, is looking for customers. Opponents, however, are still concerned.

The Campo band of Mission Indians, searching for customers for a proposed landfill, made its sales pitch to North County city leaders Friday, saying the dump will be ready to accept the area’s trash within a year.

“We come here today in the hope that we can start down the road toward some mutual agreement on carrying your waste to our landfill,” Mission Indian Tribal Chairman Ralph Goff told the North County Cities Coalition for Solid Waste Issues.

The Indians have dedicated 800 acres of their 22,000-acre reservation in a corner of southeastern San Diego County to the landfill. In 1990, the tribe signed a contract with Mid-American Waste Systems Inc. of Columbus, Ohio, to build the dump, which, if it gains federal approval, will accept 3,000 tons of trash a day for up to 35 years.

Representatives of the Indians also worked to dispel criticisms of the project, saying the landfill would exceed all state and federal environmental guidelines.

“The tribe has both traditionally and currently held a very high value to the protection of the environment,” West said.

City leaders applauded the project, in keeping with their longstanding encouragement of finding private solutions to the trash problem.

“If they do what they say they are going to do, it may very well be a viable alternative,” said Escondido Mayor Jerry Harmon, who is chairman of the informal coalition.

But Oceanside City Councilwoman Melba Bishop offered reserved encouragement.

“I wish them the very best in their project . . . but I don’t know if it will be the one for North County’s trash because of the distance,” she said.

Mid-America plans to go ahead with the dump even without guarantees from any city or the county that its trash would be sent there, said Jim West, a financial consultant hired by the Mission Indians.

“We would prefer to work with the total system, but we will consider working with just parts of it,” West said, adding that private haulers would be open to using the landfill.

But, in a news conference held before the Campo tribe’s presentation, opponents of the landfill reiterated their long-held fears that leakage from the dump could contaminate the well water on which both they and the Indians depend.

To Donna Tisdale, who lives on 140 acres next to the site, no amount of evidence provided by Mid-America Waste Systems will assure her that the landfill would be safe.

“No matter how well built or how well regulated, the landfill’s liner will eventually fail and contaminate our sole source of water,” she said.

Opponents, mostly neighbors to the site, also argue that the landfill would be too far away for trash hauling.

Tisdale said she hopes the expansion of the county’s San Marcos landfill announced Wednesday will give the cities in North County time to place a landfill in their own area and “take responsibility for their own waste.”