County Is Confident Trash Crisis Averted

After meeting with the judge who has blocked the expansion of the San Marcos landfill, crisis-control officials for the county said Thursday that they are confident the garbage dump will stay open.

Superior Court Judge Judith McConnell scheduled a hearing for Aug. 21 during which the county’s attorneys will argue that a flawed environmental impact report--necessary for the expansion--has been fixed.

Also Thursday, the county asked to be placed on the Aug. 25 agenda of the San Marcos City Council, to ask that the city once again allow the expansion of the landfill. The city on Tuesday revoked its landfill expansion permit because, it said, the permit was issued on the basis of the flawed EIR.

If the county successfully passes those hurdles, it will ask state officials in September to allow the landfill expansion before it reaches capacity Oct. 1, said Deborah Castillo, spokeswoman for the county’s Department of Public Works.

But, if those three hurdles aren’t negotiated, she said, the county is prepared to ask Gov. Pete Wilson to declare a state of emergency so that the trash generated by 600,000 North County residents and businesses can still be dumped in San Marcos or be taken to county landfills either east of Santee or on Otay Mesa in South County. For now, North County’s trash can’t be diverted to other county landfills because that garbage detour requires permits that the county does not have.

“We’ll pursue this to the bitter end,” Castillo said.

Thursday’s meeting before McConnell was attended by three attorneys from the county counsel staff as well as Mike Hogan, attorney for Christward Ministry, a religious retreat center near the San Marcos landfill that filed a lawsuit challenging the legal adequacy of the landfill expansion’s environmental impact report.

McConnell agreed with Hogan’s arguments that the EIR was flawed because, among other things, it failed to discuss the environmental consequences of shipping clay to the landfill so that its height can be increased from 750 feet to 950 feet. McConnell called Thursday’s meeting to explain what she expects from the county to repair the document, attorneys said.

According to Hogan, the judge told the county’s attorneys she was concerned that they were giving short-shrift to her ruling that the EIR needed to be fixed. The county on July 14 made some adjustments to the existing EIR and then recertified it, without passing it out to public agencies for requisite review.

“The county’s attorneys assured her that they knew what they were doing,” Hogan said, “and she advised them to be very cautious because some significant issues needed to be addressed.”

McConnell told the assembled lawyers, Hogan said, that she expected the county to at least write a supplemental EIR, if not a new one altogether, which by definition would require that it be circulated publicly for review and comment. That process could take a year--in which time the San Marcos landfill will have long since reached capacity--and has been resisted by the county.

County officials had a different interpretation of Thursday’s meeting with the judge.

According to Castillo, the judge simply issued the timeline during which the county is to explain what they have done in writing to her, and then return to court Aug. 21 for an open hearing to debate whether the county has successfully satisfied her concerns.

“She’s willing to listen to what the county’s solution is,” Castillo said. “If she indeed wanted a new supplemental EIR, she wouldn’t have set the (Aug. 21) hearing. She is giving us the opportunity to show her that we’ve taken the corrective actions necessary.”

Castillo said the flaws in the EIR were procedural, not substantive, and that the repair work already done by the county should accommodate the judge, thereby sidestepping a trash crisis.