Santa Clarita / Antelope Valley : Waste Shipments Near Lancaster Begin Today : Environment: Up to 150 tons per day will be trucked in from El Cajon. Bids to halt the project have failed.

Trucks full of garbage from the city of El Cajon will begin arriving in the Lancaster area today, despite repeated efforts by local environmentalists and other residents to keep them from coming.

Universal Refuse Removal, based in El Cajon, said it will initially haul as much as 150 tons of commercial waste a day to a privately owned landfill just outside the Lancaster city limits. By mid-July, when residential waste is also transported, the daily amount could reach 300 tons.

“We’re very encouraged,” said Rex Buck, general manager for Universal Refuse Removal. “It’s a good deal for the citizens of El Cajon.”

On Thursday, San Diego Superior Court Judge William J. Howatt took under submission a request for an immediate stay and court order to prevent El Cajon from dumping its trash in Lancaster, but a decision could not come in time to stop at least the start of the dumping.

Lyle Talbot, an Antelope Valley environmental activist, said Thursday that he is not optimistic the judge will rule in favor of the request.

“I feel we will not win,” said Talbot. “Our next administrative relief would be to go to the state Regional Water Quality Control Board.”

Talbot said the water agency would be asked to review the permit it issued to Waste Management, the owner of the Lancaster landfill and also the parent company of Universal Refuse Removal.

Opponents of the dumping plan already failed in an attempt to persuade the El Cajon City Council to derail it. Los Angeles County Supervisor Mike Antonovich was also unsuccessful in his bid to get the board to prohibit the dumping of out-of-county garbage in the Antelope Valley.

Meanwhile, Buck said El Cajon residents will benefit from the long-distance disposal of their waste.

“It’s in the best interest of the citizens of El Cajon,” he said. “The disposal rate at the San Diego County-run landfill has gone up every year for the past five years. This gives the citizens of El Cajon some relief.”

Despite the 320-mile round-trip trek the trash trucks will make six days a week to bring El Cajon’s trash to Lancaster, residents of the San Diego area city will see their disposal rate drop $1 per month to $13.16.

Universal Refuse trash trucks, measuring 59 feet in length and with 18-ton capacities, will make as many as 12 round trips each day from El Cajon to Lancaster, said Buck. The round-trip distance is 320 miles.

Buck said virtually all of El Cajon’s residential, commercial and industrial waste--about 75,000 tons annually--will be disposed of in Lancaster.