Judge Seeks New Report on Landfill : Trash: County officials hope a fixed version of the rejected environmental study of San Marcos dump will satisfy the court order.

New details of a judge’s ruling on what San Diego County officials must do before they expand the San Marcos landfill continued to fuel debate Tuesday over whether the county verges on a garbage crisis.

Superior Court Judge Judith McConnell ruled in June that the county’s report on the environmental impact of the expansion was flawed.

Among other things, she said the report failed to consider the consequences of using a clay liner so that a second level of garbage could be heaped atop the existing dump, thereby increasing the height of the garbage from 750 feet to 950 feet.

When McConnell finalized her judgment in legal documents delivered to attorneys Monday, she didn’t say specifically that the county must write a new environmental impact report or go through the process of circulating a new report to public agencies that need to review and approve it.

So Monday, the county’s attorneys claimed a victory of sorts, believing that actions by the county supervisors two weeks ago had fixed the faulty environmental impact report in short-cut fashion. The attorneys held that once McConnell was formally presented with that fix, she would be satisfied and there would be no need to formally write and circulate a new environmental report.

But Tuesday, the second half of McConnell’s ruling was delivered, and it specifically stated that the county would have to prepare “an adequate evaluation” of the use of the clay liner and that, additionally, the county must recirculate “any future environmental impact report” to the requisite public agencies.

This time, the attorney for Christward Ministry, the religious retreat center that has brought the legal challenges against the county, claimed victory.

It was clear to him, said attorney Michael Hogan, that the judge expected the county to prepare a new environmental impact report and then send it around for public review.

“I don’t know how the county plans to get around that (recirculation) requirement,” said Hogan, attorney for Christward Ministry. “They think they somehow can, and I think they’re goofy.”

Such a process would take a year or longer--by which time the San Marcos landfill would be filled beyond capacity and the county’s Board of Supervisors would be confronted with the political nightmare of deciding where to send North County’s garbage.

However, Deputy County Counsel Scott H. Peters said Tuesday that he remains confident the county can prove to the judge that it has already satisfied her requirements.

On July 14, county officials simply recertified the existing environmental impact report after making the fixes they believed would please McConnell, Peters said.

Among those fixes, he said, was a promise by the county that any significant adverse effects caused by the use of a clay liner would be no worse than the worst possible effects already studied in the existing environmental impact report.

By promising to limit any adverse environmental effects to the worst-case scenario already considered in the existing environmental impact report, there is no need to write and recirculate a new document, Peters said.

“The judge wants an adequate evaluation prepared, and we believe we’ve done that (by correcting) the existing environmental impact report,” he said.

Peters noted that the county’s response to McConnell’s ruling--due by Aug. 31--still needs to be approved by the county supervisors, “and the board may say, hell, do an EIR. But we think that we’ve already satisfied her concerns.”