Confusion Over New Dump Site : Trash: Conflicting advice, changing reports bedevil supervisors trying to narrow choices for a new North County landfill site.

If San Diego County supervisors betray their frustration Tuesday as they continue their efforts to place a new landfill site in North County, little wonder.

Consider the sometimes conflicting recommendations they have received from three different consulting firms, as well as the county’s own staff and advice from self-appointed experts, in trying to pick the best places to dump rubbish in North County.

One candidate garbage dump site, alongside Interstate 15 and just north of Deer Springs Road, was ranked as the second best possible in a 1986 study.

Two years later that so-called Twin Oaks site was deemed unworthy by another consultant, SCS Engineers. Too small, SCS said, less than 20 million cubic yards. It didn’t even make the cut as one of the 55 best candidate landfill sites in North County.

Two years after that, in 1990, the county’s own staff increased its estimate of the site’s capacity to 26 million cubic yards, “and we have verified this,” a staff member said at the time.

Just a month later, the same county staff member said new calculations showed the Twin Oaks Valley site could take from 44 to 54 million cubic yards.

Later, SCS refigured the capacity of Twin Oaks site at a whopping 92 million cubic yards. But after that, the firm said the 92 million figure was off, explaining it as a typographical error.

A citizens group called North County Coalition hired its own engineer to study the Twin Oaks site, frustrated by the county consultants’ changing figures. The private engineer calculated the site’s capacity at 80 million cubic yards. And a second engineer independently fixed the site’s capacity at 74 million cubic yards.

A new county consultant, Butler Roach Group, was hired for yet a third report and said Twin Oaks could hold 70 million cubic yards.

And so it has gone over the past six years, as the county’s Department of Public Works tries frantically to find a place to put North County’s trash, now that the existing garbage dump in San Marcos is brimming. The experts have cost the county hundreds of thousands of dollars in consulting fees without providing definitive answers, leaving the selection of a site more an art than a science.

Supervisor John MacDonald, whose district covers North County, said he is frustrated by the varying results, but that he has come to rely on the recommendations.

“I have to accept their results as being authentic, even though it looks like it’s a changing deal,” he said. “And if we select a couple two or three sites for more in-depth analysis, we might get still some different figures.”

The County Board of Supervisors already has given the go-ahead for the staff to pursue in-depth study of two sites that already have received preliminary nod: on Aspen Road in Fallbrook, and at Gregory Canyon, alongside the San Luis Rey River and California 76 in Pala.

But supervisors said they wanted to look for still more garbage dump sites, closer to the population centers of North County, even if those sites are smaller than the ones farther out.

That new search identified 16 possible sites, some of which had been considered and discounted in the past, and lead to the scoring by the consultant of the best four locations:

* Along Oceanside Boulevard in the city of Oceanside, near the massive Rancho del Oro residential and commercial development.

* In a rural area south of Lake Hodges, 1 1/2 miles west of Rancho Bernardo.

* Near Gopher Canyon Road, one mile northeast of the city of Vista and alongside the Vista Valley Country Club.

* Merriam Mountain South, just west of Interstate 15 and across the freeway from the Lawrence Welk Resort and its adjoining Champagne Village mobile home park.

On Tuesday, county supervisors will continue discussing whether the county staff should pursue one or more of those sites for more study.

As typically has been the case whenever a landfill site is pitched as a possibility, people living near the site have raised a metaphoric stink.

The newest study, however, also has generated critics who think potentially good sites have been improperly dismissed as bad, based on 20 criteria on which each site was judged.

These critics, members of the North County Coalition who have argued vehemently against the selection of the Gregory Canyon and Aspen Road sites, say the Twin Oaks site should have been scored significantly higher in the rankings than it was by Butler Roach. And now they worry that the Twin Oaks site will no longer be considered as a good candidate by the supervisors.

A review of how the Twin Oaks site and the Merriam Mountain site, just to its north, have fared in the landfill competition over the years reflects how different consultants, using different criteria, can upgrade or downgrade a site’s ranking.

The Merriam Mountain and Twin Oaks sites were ranked first and second, respectively, as the best of the bunch by the county’s first consultant, Edarra Engineers. The citizens advisory group working with Edarra said the Merriam Mountain site was “out of view” of the residents and visitors at the Lawrence Welk Resort and mobile home park alongside it.

Butler Roach, however, said Merriam Mountain would be in “full view” of those residents.

Why the discrepancy? Simple, county officials say. When Edarra looked at the site, it put its capacity at about 20 million cubic yards of trash--little enough, and tucked into one particular canyon, where it wouldn’t been seen from across the freeway, at Lawrence Welk’s. When Butler Roach ranked the site, it took the trash mound to a higher elevation, thereby increasing its capacity, but at the same time exposing the garbage to the neighbors on the east.

In the Edarra study of 1986, the Twin Oaks site was believed to have sufficient soils to cover the trash as it was layered higher and higher. But SCS and Butler Roach said there wasn’t enough cover material at Twin Oaks.

Again, why the discrepancy?

Simple, county officials say: Edarra put less than 20 million cubic yards of trash inside the Twin Oaks canyon, and so there was enough nearby dirt to cover the stuff. But if you put 50 million or more cubic yards of garbage in there, no longer is there enough dirt; it has all been used up by then.

The Edarra study said access into Twin Oaks was good--but only if a direct route was built from the I-15-Deer Springs Road junction onto the site. The SCS report concluded that access into the Merriam Mountain South site was bad--but didn’t cite an access problem into the Twin Oaks site. Butler Roach, on the other hand, said access into the Twin Oaks site was bad because the only existing road into the canyon was through a rural residential area, while it found access into Merriam Mountain to be good--contrary to the SCS conclusion.

“No wonder the supervisors are confused,” said Jeanne Ray, a member of the North County Coalition.

Norman Hickey, the county’s chief administrative officer, noted in a memo to his bosses that, over the years, the criteria to judge the various landfill sites has changed, leading to different findings and recommendations.

For instance, concern for water contamination was given increased value in the most recent study. For that reason, the Twin Oaks site was scored poorly because water runoff from the site could taint the waters of the Batiquitos Lagoon, 13 miles away--even though the county already is considering a landfill at Gregory Canyon, literally alongside the San Luis Rey River and whose underground water basin is being considered by water authorities as a massive underground reservoir.

And how about the varying estimates of trash capacity at Twin Oaks, from less than 20 million to upward of 70 million cubic yards? Different engineers made different assumptions about how high the trash should be piled, county officials say. Early on, for whatever reason, engineers didn’t pile trash as high as the existing ridgelines bordering the landfill canyons--even though at the Aspen Road site in Fallbrook, which has passed preliminary muster, trash already is designed to exceed the height of the ridgelines, resulting in a Mt. Trashmore.

Now, finally, the engineers in the most recent study have been told to pile the trash to the top of the ridgeline, putting the Twin Oaks capacity at about 70 million cubic yards. The North County Coalition’s engineer maintains even more trash can be dumped there.

With previous consultants, sites that were only 200 feet from the aqueduct lines carrying water into the county were not eliminated. Under the new study, landfill sites that close to aqueduct lines are severely penalized.

County officials and the supervisors themselves say the whole process of “siting” a landfill can be confusing, but that over the years, they have better defined the best criteria on which to base their ultimate decision.

Does that mean the county will take a second look at landfill sites that already are being pursued, based on old criteria that has now been judged as lacking?

“The public is upset. They ask, with great justification, ‘How come the criteria today isn’t the same as the criteria before?’ The answer is, it should be the same,” Supervisor Susan Golding said.

“If we were to go back and redo everything we’ve done to this point, we’d still be here into the 21st Century wondering when a decision would be made, and I’m not interested in doing that,” she said.

Supervisor Brian Bilbray says he isn’t married to a consultant recommendations.

“I’ll be taking the consultant’s reports as recommendations, but they’re not a mandate,” he said. “I’ll take them with a grain of salt. Common sense is a very rare commodity in a process like this, but it’s essential.”

Tale of Two Sites

Site No. 9, called Merriam Mountain South and opposite the Lawrence Welk Resort, and Site No. 8, called Twin Oaks and north of Deer Springs Road and the Golden Door health spa, are side-by-side candidates for landfill sites. No. 9 is one of the four finalists as an “auxiliary” landfill site, partly because there are existing roads leading to it. But No. 8, Twin Oaks, scored poorly because, among other things, access on an existing road (darker line) wasn’t considered good by consultants. The consultant was told not to consider whether new access roads (such as one leading to the landfill from the Deer Springs-I-15 junction) would be feasible and make access good.