Incinerators Retained as Trash Option

The County Board of Supervisors voted 4 to 1 to keep waste incineration as one of the alternative refuse-disposal technologies to be considered in south San Diego County.

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Before Wednesday’s vote, the board heard from both sides of an acrimonious trash-burning debate that has festered for more than 10 years, first at the city level, then the county.

In requests to the supervisors to drop waste incineration projects from consideration, opponents cited a hard-fought political victory in 1987 when the city of San Diego abandoned plans for a waste-to-energy system.

Called the San Diego Energy Recovery program, or SANDER, that project was fraught with health risks, according to critics, and engendered a ballot initiative that effectively banned massive waste-burning systems within city limits.

Board members said the decision Wednesday was in no way an endorsement of trash-burning projects, but simply a decision to include them in a list of candidates to reduce the burden on two landfills in South County.

Supervisor Susan Golding cast the dissenting vote.

The Sycamore and Otay landfills in South County serve about 1 million residents who dispose of more than 2,500 tons of garbage a day.

As landfills approach capacity and the population grows, the county has been forced to seek alternatives, including recycling, composting and two forms of incineration--”mass-burning” and a more complicated process that separates usable garbage, then processes remaining waste into a fuel which is later burned for energy.

A milestone in the incinerator debate came to pass last year when the board rejected a decade-old plan to build a $325-million incinerator in San Marcos.

In the emotional debate last year, opponents said the plant would release harmful levels of toxins and called on groups such as the American Lung Assn. and Environmental Health Coalition to provide testimony at board hearings. However, the majority of supervisors said they rejected the project out of concerns about financial liability that the contractor, Thermo Electron, was not able to assume.

On Wednesday, a familiar cast of critics appeared at the supervisors’ meeting to voice opposition.

Bob Glaser, author of the city’s Clean Air Ballot Measure in 1987 and an opponent of the county’s proposed waste disposal plant in San Marcos, urged the board to eliminate incinerators from consideration. He cited a figure of $280,000 that was used to pay litigation costs to block the San Marcos project.

“Believe me, if the county goes through with this,” Glaser said, “there is going to be litigation that will make the San Marcos quagmire look like a small claims court action.”

Supervisor Brian Bilbray, the board’s most forceful proponent for keeping incineration on the list of technologies to be explored, said the verdict was still out on trash burning.

“I have problems with mass burning,” he said. “But to say across the board: no incinerators . . . I think that’s irresponsible.”