Judge Blocks Expansion of S.D. Landfill

An environmental impact report that supposedly paved the way for the controversial expansion of the San Marcos landfill was ruled inadequate Monday, sending San Diego County’s beleaguered trash bureaucrats reeling in the face of yet a new, pressing crisis.

County Department of Public Works officials had believed that they had jumped through all the environmental hoops necessary to allow garbage at the 750-foot-high landfill to grow by another 200 feet--thereby expanding the landfill’s capacity by another five to seven years.

Without the expansion, the landfill, which opened in 1978, is expected to reach capacity in July or August.

But, on Monday, Superior Court Judge Judith McConnell said the latest environmental impact report on the expansion failed to take into account the ramifications of trucking more than a million cubic yards of clay to the landfill site. The clay would serve as a sort of liner or cap so the second-story landfill could be constructed atop the original one.

The judge said county officials also failed to appropriately respond to public response and criticism of the most recent environmental impact report, which provided the basis for public agencies to approve the landfill expansion.

For that matter, McConnell said, the county failed to properly circulate the newest environmental impact report to all of the appropriate authorities for their response.

McConnell’s decision, prompted by a lawsuit filed by Christward Ministry, which operates a 640-acre religious retreat near the landfill, sent county officials scrambling for new direction.

Deborah Castillo, spokeswoman for the Department of Public Works, which oversees the county’s landfills, said the corrections sought by the judge might take six to nine months to complete.

But, she noted, the landfill is expected to reach capacity by July, and now the county is in its most serious jam yet on where to put North County’s refuse.

Among the options now under review by department bosses, she said, are to ask the county Board of Supervisors to approve an emergency measure allowing the landfill to exceed capacity--action that would also require approval of other state agencies--or to allow the landfill to temporarily close, thereby forcing the trucking of garbage to other county landfills in South or East County, at least temporarily.

“What we need now is a policy decision, direction from the board,” she said. “It’s the board’s call.”

Michael Hogan, attorney for Christward Ministries, said he was pleased--but not surprised--by McConnell’s ruling.

“These were very obvious deficiencies that were brought to the county’s attention during the public comment period, and I guess now we feel a little bit vindicated,” Hogan said. “My clients were severely criticized for trying to delay the process (of expanding the landfill’s size). But these were obvious defects that could have been remedied earlier.”

The San Marcos landfill, the most widely used among the five operated by the county, was originally expected to service North County through 1997. But explosive growth in the mid-1980s forced officials to project its closing as early as 1990 or 1991.

Since then, the close-down date has been pushed back again, thanks in part to the successes of recycling and the recession, which have sharply reduced the amount of wholesale trash, such as that from construction projects, being dumped in San Marcos.

Although the city of San Marcos, within whose boundaries the landfill is situated, has argued that the landfill already is at capacity, Castillo said that capacity--when the average landfill height reaches 750 feet--will probably be reached in July.

Gary Stephany, chief of environmental health for the county’s Department of Health Services, which is delegated by the state to monitor the landfill’s capacity, estimated Monday that the dump will reach capacity in August, “give or take a few weeks or months.”

The county had proposed capping off the existing landfill with a foot of clay, to serve as an impermeable liner to prevent contaminates from seeping into the ground water. On top of that clay liner, another 200 feet of trash would be compacted.

At 950 feet, the landfill would be the tallest hill in the region, a “Mt. Trashmore,” as Hogan called it.

Hogan had argued--successfully, it turned out--that the latest environmental impact report on the landfill expansion failed to reconcile the benefits of the clay against the environmental damage that might be caused by shipping the clay into the landfill site, including, for instance, its cost, the dust and traffic it would generate and the energy consumption of the shipping itself.

The county argued that the impact from hauling clay would be no worse than hauling cover dirt, as had been discussed in an earlier version of the EIR, and that importing clay would not consume as much energy as hauling trash to Sycamore Canyon in East County.

McConnell said there is nothing in the EIR to support the county’s conclusion.

The judge also scolded the county for failing to address several direct questions about the clay cap, existing surface and ground-water violations, and the duration of the operation of the landfill.

She noted that the county had begged off requests for reports on surface or ground-water violations as being outside the scope of the EIR. McConnell said she disagreed because “any existing problems with surface and ground water will only be exacerbated by the expansion of the landfill.”

McConnell also noted that the county had failed to provide all the EIR documents for review to appropriate authorities until just three days before the end of the public comment period.

The county asked McConnell to view that as “harmless error,” but she disagreed.