Plan to Haul Trash to Desert Dump Rejected

Plans by Los Angeles County to send trash by train to the High Desert have been derailed, at least for now, by voters in San Bernardino County.

Voters said Tuesday that they are not necessarily opposed to huge garbage dumps atop High Desert aquifers. But they specifically rejected Rail-Cycle, a private landfill designed to accommodate much of Southern California’s trash for 100 years.

Technically, voters refused to allow San Bernardino County to tax Rail-Cycle, which already had agreed to pump millions of dollars into government coffers in exchange for permission to develop the landfill. By rejecting the revenue, the voters effectively killed the project, county officials said.

Given the voters’ mixed signals, both sides claimed victory Wednesday.

On the one hand, the voters rejected Measure L, an initiative designed to ban huge landfills in unincorporated areas of San Bernardino County that are within 10 miles of significant underground water sources.

With the defeat of the initiative--opposed by 52.8% of the voters--the green light might have been given to the proposed $100-million Rail-Cycle landfill near Amboy, halfway between Barstow and Needles along historic U.S. 66. The dump ultimately could reach 400 feet high, measuring three miles by one mile at its base.

But Rail-Cycle’s business contract with the county also required voter approval of Measure M, a tax on Rail-Cycle that would generate up to $24 million a year in revenue for the county’s general fund. Voters rejected that measure, with only 41.4% supporting it, final but unofficial results show.

The San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors had approved the mega-landfill by a 3-2 vote, contingent upon the approval of Measure M.

Stu Clark, project manager for Rail-Cycle--a partnership between Waste Management Inc. and the Santa Fe railroad--said that with the defeat of the business tax on the project, the company would seek other ways to guarantee that the county gets the money so the project can move forward.

One possible option, Clark said, is to put the issue to another public vote.

“We have reached a mutual agreement with the county for it to benefit financially by the landfill, and there are other mechanisms to see that it’s done,” Clark said. “Tuesday’s vote is not a deal killer. There’s more than one way to skin a cat. At worst, it’s a small bump in the road.”

But Paul Woodruff, who headed the anti-landfill campaigns, said Tuesday’s results made it clear that San Bernardino does not want to play host to trash from Los Angeles and elsewhere.

He said that Measure L, the land-use issue, was defeated because of voter confusion, but that voters had no problem understanding the clearer issue--the specific county contract with Rail-Cycle--and wanted nothing to do with it.

“If it were to go to another public vote, I don’t think the results would be any different,” Woodruff said.

In races elsewhere:

Opponents of a proposed commercial airport at the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station were right back where they started--leaving Orange County in charge of plotting the base’s future after the military leaves in 1999.

Measure S, which would have blocked a commercial airport at El Toro, was soundly rejected 59.8% to 40.2%, according to the latest results from the Orange County registrar of voters.

Orange County voters also rejected by a 3-2 margin a proposed charter measure that would have established the Board of Supervisors as a policymaking body and limited members to two four-year terms. A companion ballot initiative that would have increased the number of board members from five to nine also was defeated.

Supervisor Marian Bergeson, a supporter of the charter form of government, said she was disappointed by the vote but prepared to move forward on other ideas to restructure government.

“I think the voters are demanding change, but they are not certain how to frame it. It is hard to conceptualize,” she said.

In Ventura, voters resoundingly defeated a restrictive ballot measure that would have prohibited the city from offering tax rebates or other incentives to developers.

Measure S was launched last fall to stop the $50-million expansion of the Buenaventura Mall, financed in part by a hotly contested tax-sharing arrangement between the city and mall developers.

The measure would have singled out Ventura as the only city in the state unable to offer tax rebates or other enticements commonly used by cities statewide. But nearly 65% of the city’s electorate voted against the initiative.

Contributing to this story were Times staff writers Matt Lait, Rene Lynch, Tracy Wilson and Tina Daunt and Times correspondent Shelby Grad.